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THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


DAVID JAMES BURRELL, D. D. 


The Golden Parable Cloth, $1.25 


The Laughter of God Cloth, $1.25 
And Other Sermons 


Why I Believe the Bible Cloth, $1.25 


The Sermon Cloth, $2.00 
Its Construction and Delivery 


Studies in the Story of the Prodigal Son 


J ®y 
DAVID F¥AMES BURRELL, D.D. LL. D. 


Author of “The Laughter of God,” “Why 
I Believe the Bible,” ‘The Sermon: Its 
Construction and Delivery,” ete. 


New York Chicago 
Fleming H. Revell Company 
London and Edinburgh 





Copyright, MCMxXXvVI, by 
FLEMING H, REVELL COMPANY 


New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


ND he sad, A certain man had two sons: 
A and the younger of them sad to his father, 
Father, give me the portion of goods that 
falleth ito me. And he divided unto them his living. 

And not many days after the younger son 
gathered all together, and took his journey into a 
far country, and there wasted Mis substance wunith 
riotous living. 

And when he had speni all, there arose a mighty 
famine in that land; and he began to be in want. 
And he went and joined himself to a citizen of 
that country; and he sent him inio his fields to 
feed swine. And he would fain have filled is 
belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and 
no man gave unio him. 

And when he came to himself he said, How 
many lured servants of my father’s have bread 
enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! 

I will arise and go to my father, and will say 
unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven 
and before thee. 

And am no more worthy to be called thy son: 
make me as one of thy hired servants. 

And he arose, and came to his father. But when 
he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, 


Pb 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck 
and kissed him. 

And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned 
against heaven and in thy sight, and am no more 
worthy to be called thy son. 

But the father said to his servants, Bring forth 
the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on 
lis hand and shoes on his feet: and bring hither 
the fatted calf and kill it; and let us eat, and be 
merry: 

For this my son was dead and is alive again; 
he was lost and 1s found. And they began to be 
merry. 

Now hs elder son was in the field: and as he 
came and drew nigh to the house he heard musick 
and dancing. 

And he called one of the servants and asked 
what these things meant. And he said unto him, 
Thy brother is come; and thy father hath killed 
the fatted calf, because he hath received him safe 
and sound, | 

And he was angry, and would not go im: 
theréfore came his father out and entreated him. 

And he answering said to ls father, Lo, these 
many years do I serve thee, netther transgressed 
I at any time thy commandment; and yet thou 
never gavest me a kid that I might make merry 
with my friends: 

But as soon as this thy son was come, which 


Ly 64 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast 
killed for him the fatted calf. 

And he said unto him, Son, thow ari ever unth 
me and all that I have ts thine. 

It was meet that we should make merry and be 
glad; for this thy brother was dead, and is alive 
again; and was lost, and 1s found. 

—LUKE 15: 11-82. 


ae 





ForEwoORD—IHE WonDERFUL TEACHER 


Contents 


Tue FaTHER - 
Tue * Livinc ” - 


Tue YounceER Son 


In THE Far Country 
Ar His Wirs’ Eno’ - 


Ricut Aspout Face - 


A Goop REso.uTion - 


A Poor Prayer 


Tue Love trHat Witt Not Ler Us Go 


*«¢ Grace ABOUNDING ”’ 


Joy 1n Heaven - 


Tue Exper Son 


oc] 


I! 
25 
37 
51 
63 
75 
89 
99 
109 
11g 
129 
139 
149 





FOREWORD 


“ He spake many things unto them in parables, 


3) 


saying,—”—MaAtT. 13: 3. 


THE WONDERFUL TEACHER 


r \HE scribes and Pharisees were amazed 
and bewildered by the sudden appearance 
of Jesus of Nazareth as a religious 

teacher. Who was this upstart, that He should 

presume to poach upon a reservation which had 
been theirs from time immemorial? A carpenter, 
whose father and mother they knew! “ Whence,” 
they indignantly asked, “hath this man letters?” 

Whence, indeed, save in the sordid environment of 

a workshop with chips and shavings about His 

feet? Yet the silly, hoodwinked people thronged 

to hear Him! 

It was obvious that something must be done to 
stay His ever-increasing influence. By. order of 
the Sanhedrin a detachment of the Temple Guard 
was sent to arrest Him. They found Him, with 
the people gathered about Him, in Solomon’s 
porch; and, pausing to listen, they returned with- 
out their prisoner. What had they to say for 
themselves? Never did any posse comitatus pre- 
sent so strange a report. In answer to the 
question, “‘ Why have ye not brought Him?” they 
had nothing to say but ‘‘ Never man spake like this 
man! ”’ 

The world has ever since been echoing that 


[ 13 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


verdict. Here was an unknown man who, in His 
early thirties, emerged in homespun from an in- 
conspicuous home and, as an itinerant preacher, 
without prestige, or patronage, or the humblest 
sort of diploma, lifted up His voice against the 
united wisdom of His time; a voice that, coming 
down through the centuries, has supplanted the 
learning of all the rabbinical and philosophical 
schools and is heard in the forefront of every 
movement in behalf of progress throughout the 
world. When all other miracles have been dis- 
posed of, this is one that still remains to be ac- 
counted for. Results do not happen without 
causes. 

This singular Teacher left on record fewer 
words than the average country minister of to-day, 
but every utterance was freighted with significance. 
“Burning thoughts in breathing words!” He 
wasted no rhetoric on non-essentials, but boldly 
touched on all the great spiritual problems with 
which men are hopelessly wont to grapple and, at 
His touch, the Gordian knots were loosed. 

It was thus that Jesus spoke, His enemies them- 
selves being witnesses. One of the remarkable 
facts of history is that the most glowing tributes to 
His wisdom have come, not from His avowed fol- 
lowers but from those who, by a singular infatua- 
tion of sciolism, have denied His superhuman 
claims. Such men as Josephus the Jew, Julian the 


[ 14 ] 


THE WONDERFUL TEACHER 


Apostate and Celsus the satirist frankly recognized 
the transcendent merit of His teaching. 

Listen to Spinoza, the father of modern panthe- 
ism: ‘“‘ Christ was indeed the temple of God, since 
God has most fully revealed Himself in Him.” 

Listen to Rousseau the infidel: “ What sweet- 
ness, what purity in the manner of Christ! What 
an affecting gracefulness in His didactics! What 
sublimity in His maxims! What profound wisdom 
in His discourses! What presence of mind, what 
subtlety, what fitness in His replies! How great 
His command over His passions! ” 

Listen to David Strauss, the leader of a radical 
movement of the nineteenth century which, prob- 
ably, did more than any other to plunge Europe 
into the World War: “ In Jesus the union of self- 
consciousness with the consciousness of God was 
real, and expressed, not only verbally but actually, 
in all the conditions of His life. He represented 
within the religious sphere the highest point, be- 
yond which posterity cannot go; yea, which it can- 
not even equal, inasmuch as every one who here- 
after should climb the same height could only do 
this with the help of Jesus who first attained it.” 

Listen to Renan, the author of the sacrilegious 
Vie de Jesu: “The moral teaching of Jesus is the 
highest that has emanated from the human con- 
science, the most beautiful that any moralist has 
ever traced. Whatever may be the surprises of the 


[ 15 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


future, this Jesus will never be surpassed. His 
worship will grow young without ceasing; His 
legend will call forth tears without end; His suf- 
ferings will melt the noblest hearts: all ages will 
proclaim that among the children of men there is 
none born greater than Jesus.” 

Listen to Theodore Parker: “This man, ridiculed 
for His lack of knowledge in a nation of hypocriti- 
cal priests and corrupt people, falls back on simple 
morality and religion. He unites in Himself the 
sublimest precepts and divinest practices, thus more 
than realizing the dream of prophets and sages. 
He rises free from all the prejudice of His age, 
nation or sect; gives free range to the Spirit of 
God in His breast; sets apart the law, sacred and 
time-honored as it was, its forms, its sacrifice, its 
temple and its priests; puts away the doctors of the 
law, subtle, learned, irrefragable; and pours out a 
doctrine beautiful as the light, sublime as heaven 
and true as God.” 

How shall this be accounted for? What was it 
in the teaching of Jesus that has called forth not 
only the enthusiastic devotion of His disciples but 
such glowing tributes of praise from His avowed 
enemies all along the ages? A peasant with no 
influential retinue; His pulpit the green hillside or 
a fishing boat moored to the margin of an inland 
lake; His auditorium no imposing cathedral or 
lecture-hall but the blue canopy of the overarching 


[ 16 ] 


THE WONDERFUL TEACHER 


skies; His audience the procession of the ages. 
What was the secret of His power? This preacher 
never spoke to empty pews. “ ‘The common people 
heard him gladly.” Rabbis and philosophers 
turned their backs upon Him, as they are still dis- 
posed to do, but the people—“ the common people ” 
—see how to-day as ever they come trooping after 
Him! 


AUTHORITY 


It is written that those who heard Him “ were 
amazed, for he taught them as one having au- 
thority and not as the scribes” (Matt. 7: 29). 
The word here rendered “ authority” is exousia, 
and it designates an inward source. Our Lord 
taught not as the scribes, who referred for their 
authority to other teachers, but as one who could 
say, “Il am the Truth.” He taught, not like the 
prophets, who introduced their discourses with 
“Thus saith the Lord,” since He and the Father 
were in such complete harmony that Their word 
was one. Wherefore He spake on this wise: 
“Verily, verily, I say unto you.” How bold is 
this manifesto! Who is this that sets his ipse dixit 
against precedent, tradition, the teaching of all 
ancient worthies? How this “I say unto you” 
goes crashing through the elaborate systems set up 
by former courts and councils! Here is a tone of 
authority which finds no parallel except in the 


[17] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 





thunders of Sinai. No other preacher dogmatizes 
in this manner. He who presumes to say: 


““T am Sir Oracle, 
And when I ope my lips let no dog bark!” 


is laughed at. Yet Christ preaches, and is 
preached, with a “ Verily, verily.” This verily 
leaves no room for guesses or speculations; it is 
final, complete, conclusive. We are admonished 
against adding to it or subtracting from it. Our 
coign of vantage is here: “ Remember the words 
of the Lord Jesus, how he said unto you.” 


SIMPLICITY 


Observe, moreover, the extreme simplicity of 
His teaching. He advanced no abstruse proposi- 
tions, used no sesquipedalian phrases. He made no 
reference to philosophy or science as such, though 
His teachings challenge all philosophic and scien- 
tific tests. He spoke to plain people, addressing 
Himself to their common sense. His word was 
like an ocean, on whose shore philosophers stand 
and gaze afar with wonder, while children sport in 
its waters about their feet. 

One day He took a little child upon His knee 
and admonished His hearers that unless their atti- 
tude toward truth was as humble and receptive as 
that of childhood, they should in no wise enter the 
kingdom of truth, which is the kingdom of God. 


[ 18 ] 


THE WONDERFUL TEACHER 





No man in His audience ever knit his brows and 
wondered what the preacher was aiming at: for 
the word of Jesus had an incomparable directness, 
so that every hearer was moved to say, “ That 
means me.” 


PICTURESQUENESS 


It is safe to say that many a professor of phil- 
osophy and ethics in our leading universities—not 
to mention an occasional minister—would consider 
it beneath his dignity to use such object lessons as 
Jesus habitually employed in making clear the sub- 
limest verities. He threw His doctrine into bold 
relief by reference to anything whatever that would 
serve His purpose in nature and common life, find- 
ing 

“ Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks. 
Sermons in stones. 


Would He teach providence? “Consider the 
lilies of the field.” The final judgment? “Asa 
shepherd divideth the sheep from the goats.” 
Heaven? “In my Father’s house are many man- 
sions.” ‘The kingdom on earth? “As a grain of 
mustard seed.” Personal influence? Salt; a candle 
on a candlestick; ‘‘ a city set on a hill which cannot 
be hid.” Thus the profoundest truths were brought 
within the comprehension of simple minds. 

In the brief record of His teaching we find no 


[ 19 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


less than thirty-nine parables, together with con- 
stantly recurring metaphors and other figures of 
speech. When His disciples asked Him why He 
thus spake to the multitude, His answer was, “ It 
is given unto you to know the mysteries of the 
kingdom of heaven but unto them it is not given.” 
And He went on to explain, “ Therefore speak I 
to them in parables: because they seeing see not; 
and hearing they hear not, neither do they under- 
stand. And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of 
Fsaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear and 
shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and 
shall not perceive: For this people’s heart is waxed 
gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their 
eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should 
see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and 
should understand with their heart, and should be 
converted and I should heal them. But blessed 
are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for 
they hear. For verily I say unto you, That many 
prophets and righteous men have desired to see 
those things which ye see, and have not seen them; 
and to hear those things which ye hear, and have 
not heard them.” 


THE INNERMOST PLACE 
By this we are given to understand that while 
the Temple of Truth is open to sincere truth- 
seekers it is closed to those who are wise in their 
[ 20 ] | 


THE WONDERFUL TEACHER 


own conceit. “I thank thee, Father,” said Jesus 
on one occasion, “ because thou hast hid these 
things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed 
them unto babes”? (Matt. 11: 25). 


OPEN SESAME! 


It thus appears that the key to “‘ the mysteries of 
the kingdom” is faith; which is elsewhere defined 
as “ the substance of things hoped for, the evidence 
of things not seen.” In the province of the unseen 
and eternal, seeing is not believing. On the con- 
trary, “blessed are they that have not seen and yet 
have believed” (John 15: 29; cf. 1 Peter 1:8). 

The root of unbelief is intellectual pride. The 
wisdom of the wisest is but a little at best; “a 
little learning is a dangerous thing.” There is 
more hope. for an abecedarian than for those whose 
eyes are lofty and whose eyelids are lifted up with 
the boast, “‘ We are the scholars and wisdom will 
die with us.” 

In this connection, the difference between a man 
and a sheep is that the latter has five physical senses 
while the former has, in addition to these, a sixth 
or spiritual sense by which he is enabled to appre- 
hend spiritual things. It is by faith, that is, by 
the exercise of this sixth sense, that we accept 
“the evidence of things not seen,’ and are thus 
enabled to think God’s thoughts after Him. | 

To demand the evidence of the physical senses 


[ 21 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


in proof of the great spiritual verities which lie 
within the purview of this sixth sense, is as pre- 
posterous as it would be to insist on seeing with 
one’s ears or hearing with one’s eyes. God and 
immortality are not demonstrable as scientific 
facts. 

So it comes to pass that “not many wise men 
after the flesh are called.” In their intellectual 
pride, puffed up with a little learning in the prov- 
ince of material things, they refuse to accept by 
faith the evidence of things that lie beyond the 
horizon of the surrounding hills in the boundless 
universe of the unseen and eternal. 

And since men, by virtue of their creation in the 
divine likeness, are equipped with sovereign wills, 
they can do as they please in these premises. 


“ Though God be good and free be heaven, 
No force divine can love compel.” 


Where there is room for faith, there must of 
necessity be room for unfaith. The simpler truth 
is made by the great Teacher, the more certainly 
do sciolists reject it. And meanwhile the futile 
quest goes on. “ Canst thou by searching find out 
God?” No, never by searching like blind men 
feeling their way along the wall; but yes, certainly, 
by sitting in a reasonable, receptive attitude at the 
feet of Him who said, “I am the truth; no man 
cometh unto the Father but by me.” 


[ 22 ] 


THE WONDERFUL TEACHER 





‘MILK FOR BABES” 


Hence the parabolic teaching of Jesus. “ Then 
said he to his disciples, Will ye also go away?” 
That is, “ Will ye choose the bewildering mazes of 
speculation in preference to the simplicity of 
truth?” And they answered, “To whom, Lord, 
shall we go?” ‘To whom, indeed? ‘To the rabbis 
with their wire-drawn jots and tittles of decimated 
truth? Or to the philosophic schools by the Ilis- 
sus? Nay, Lord; “Thou only hast the words of 
eternal life.” 

And Solomon said, “Go to; I will prove thee 
with wisdom: I will search and find out the reason 
of things. . . . And behold this also is vanity — 
and vexation of spirit. . . . The wind whirl- 
eth about and returneth again to its circuits and all 
the rivers run into the sea. . . . Let us hear 
the conclusion of the whole matter. The fear of 
the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and to keep 
his commandments is the whole * of man.” 


‘This is as it is in the original. 


[ 23 ] 


“Ax 
x7 
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aan 
ry AR 
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I 
THE FATHER 


“And he said, A certain man had two sons.” 
—LUKE 15:11. 


I 
THE FATHER 


r NHE parable of The Prodigal Son is called 
The Golden Parable because it is the 
crown-jewel of them all. Its gold is as 

the gold of Havilah, of which, if a man be once 

possessed, he shall forevermore be rich toward 

God. In it the wonderful Teacher proposes to 

, unveil the-love-of-our heavenly Father, the love 

that passeth knowledge, the love that will not let 

us go. 

It tells the simple story of a wayward boy who 
left his father’s house and, after a reckless fling in 
a far country, returned in rags and tatters to find 
a welcome awaiting him. 

The setting forth of God wasnt the narrow 
dimensions of “a certain man” is not, as would 
appear, after the manner of the ancient Greeks 
who, in their desire to bring humanity and divinity 
into mutual touch, equipped the Olympiad with the 
common frailties of mortal men. As the Father is 
here portrayed in human guise his moral perfec- 
tions are unimpaired; the manifest end in view 
being to bring God down to. men only that men 
may be brought-up.to-Him. 


[ 27 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


The Teacher knew God as no other could; for 
He had been one with Him from all eternity; and 
‘His purpose in coming into the world was to reveal 
the glory and grace and truth of the Father to the 
children of men (John 1: 1-14). 

He was Himself an only begotten Son. The 
“certain man’”’ in the parable had two sons, both 
of whom were bone of his bone and flesh of his 
flesh; but our heavenly Father has one begotten 
Son and only one. 

The first recorded words of His earthly life 

were these: “ Wist ye not that I must be about my 
Father’s business?’ His last words on the Cross 
were: “Father, into thy hands I commit my 
spirit.” And the substance of all His teaching in 
between is set forth in the saying, ‘‘ The only be- 
gotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, 
he hath declared him” (John 1: 18). 

In His instructions as to prayer, which is our 
appointed medium of communication with God, 
He said to His disciples, ‘‘ When ye pray say, Our 
Father.” But not every one can say this. The 
filial spirit is the ultimate test and touchstone of 
godliness. There are not a few current mistakes 
as to the divine fatherhood, some of which are as 
old as Malachi who remonstrated with certain sen- 
timentalists of his time, saying, “The burden of 
the Lord to Israel: If then I be a father, where is 
mine honour?” (Mal. 1: 6). 7 


aot 


THE FATHER 


THE ONLY BEGOTTEN 


It is a singular fact that in the Old Testament 
there is not one reference to God as the Father 
of generic man. It is another singular fact that 
in the teachings of the New Testament there is 
not one reference to Christ as sustaining the same 
relation to-the-Father that we do. He never says 
“ Our Father” in such a way as to include Himself 
in the same category with His disciples. In teach- 
ing them how to pray He said, “ When ye pray, 
(not when we pray) say, Our Father.” To Mary 
of Magdala He said, “Go to my brethren and 
say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your 
Father.” Here, as elsewhere, observe His care- 
ful avoidance of the phrase “ Our Father” as His 
own. Why? Because He was the only begotten 
Son, begotten of God by an “ eternal generation,” 
as the early theologians used to put it, and so be- 
gotten as to seal His co-equality with the Father. 
It is obvious that no mortal man could share that 
singular relation with Him. 

This peculiar filiation with God is emphasized 
consistently all through the teaching of Jesus: as 
when Philip said to Him, “ Show us the Father 
and it sufficeth us,” and He answered, “ Have I 
been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not 
known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath 
seen the Father! How sayest thou then, Shew 


[ 29 ] | 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 





us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in 
the Father and the Father in me?” (John 14: 8- 
10). And again, “I and my Father are one” 
(John 10: 20). 

By this we are given to understand that, in 
Christ, we have not only an unveiling of the 
Father, but a verification of the incomprehensible 
mystery of the substantial unity of the persons of 
the Father and His Son. In view of this fact it is 
clear that no true Christian can hold, as some say, 
that Christ’s divinity is merely the sort of “ di- 
vinity ”’ which is claimed for other great men, or 
that His Sonship was “not essentially different 
from ours,” that is, from the “ divinity ” claimed 
for all humanity by virtue of its creation in the 
likeness of God. 

It is a. mistake-to-assume that.God is.our Father 
by reason of His having thus created us: for we 
are simply creatures of His hand. ‘To be sure, 
man is His masterpiece, made in His own image 
and after His likeness, breathing His breath and 
given dominion over all the lower orders.of. life 
(Gen. 1: 26-28). Nevertheless, God did not beget 
man but created him. “So also Christ glorified 
not himself to be made an high priest; but he that 
said unto him, Thou art my Son, to-day have I 
begotten thee ” (Heb. 5: 5). 

We may, in a figure and by a stretch of the 
imagination, think of men generically as bearing a 


[ 30 ] 


THE FATHER 


filial relation with God, as the Greek poet Aratus 
did (Acts 7:28) or as General Foch was wont 
to address his troops as ‘“ My children,” or as a 
sculptor speaks of his masterpieces as the “ children 
of his brain.”’ But the fact remains that man by 
nature is as really a creature as is the vessel made 


upon a potter’s wheel (Jer. 18: 6; cf. Rom. 9: 21). 


CHILDREN BY ADOPTION 


It was our hopelessness in sin that moved the 
only begotten Son to come into the world and 
become obedient unto death for us men and our 
salvation: and it is solely through Him, as “ the 
first born of many brethren,” that we are received 
by adoption into the family of God. The mem- 
bers of that family are “a great multitude which 
no man can number,” who in heaven ascribe per- 
petual praise to the Lamb who has redeemed them; © 
plus a great number of believers in Christ who are 
still on earth. These together constitute the great 
family or invisible Church of God. 

All these are God’s children by adoption in 
_ Christ: as it is written, “ He came unto his own, 
and his own received him not; but as many as 
received him, to them gave he power to become 
the sons of God; even to them that believe on his 
name” (John 1: 11-12). 

There are many who profess to be in this family 
who are not really so. Profession is one thing; 


[ 31 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


faith in Christ as the living Mediator between 
sinful men and a holy God is a totally different 
thing. “ Many shall say in that day, Lord, Lord, 
and he from within shall answer, Depart, I never 
knew you” (Matt. 25: 12, 41). 

Meanwhile, “‘ the Lord knoweth them that are 
his.” He only can distinguish between church- 
members who merely go through the motions of 
piety—like artificial members of the body,—and 
those who are so truly members of the body of 
Christ that His life animates them in heart and 
conscience, and mind and will; making Him their 
very Alpha and Omega, the beginning of every 
hope and end of every purpose; “ first, last, midst 
and all in all.” 

Here is the supreme manifestation of divine 
grace. “ Behold,” exclaims the aged John, “ what 
manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, 
that we should be-called the sons.of God!” (John 
38:1). It is related that a heathen convert, 
engaged in translating the Scriptures into his native 
tongue, on coming upon this passage, was so over- 
come that he fell upon his knees with the cry, 
“Nay, Lord, let me only be permitted to kiss thy 
feet!” The evangelist, however, does not pause 
there but goes straight on to announce a great 
surprise in store for true believers: “ Beloved, now 
are we sons of God, and it doth not yet appear 
what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall 


[ 82 ] 


THE FATHER 





appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him 
as he is” (1 John 3: 2). 

Dream on, O faithful follower of Christ; dream 
of the tree of life which is in the midst of the 
paradise of God; of the morning star and the 
hidden manna, of the white stone with a new name 
written therein which no man knoweth saving he 
that receiveth it; of white raiment and an incor- 
ruptible crown that fadeth not away! Mysteries 
all and only to be apprehended by faith! Dream 
on, beloved; and wonder. But know this that in 
the great day of awaking not only will your fond- 
est dream come true but it will be seen that the 
half was never told! 

Oh, the length and breadth and depth and height 
of the Father’s love thus manifest in the adoption 
of sinful men into His holy family, on the sole con- 
dition of a living faith in His only begotten and 
well beloved Son! Mayhap it was this that moved 
an unknown versifier to sing: 


“Could we with ink the ocean fill, 
Were the whole world of parchment made; 
Were every several stick a quill 
And every man a scribe by trade; 
To write the love of God alone 
Would drain that ocean dry, 
Nor could the scroll contain the whole, 
Though stretched from sky to sky!” 


[ 33 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


THE SPIRIT OF ADOPTION 


The agent in thus bringing sinners into God’s 
family is the Holy Spirit, who is therefore called 
“the Spirit of adoption” (Rom. 8:15). 

In the farewell interview of Jesus with His dis- 
ciples He said, “I will send unto you from the 
Father the Spirit of truth; he shall testify of me” 
(John 16: 7-9). It thus appears that when the 
only begotten Son had finished His redemptive 
work on earth, the administration of subsequent 
affairs was in a sense passed over to the Holy 
Spirit, whose special official function is to urge 
the claims of the Gospel upon men. 

Christ once accepted, the Holy Spirit becomes 
the Spirit of Adoption; as it is written, “ For ye 
have not received the spirit of bondage again to 
fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, 
whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself 
beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the 
children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs 
of God, and joint heirs with Christ; if so be that 
we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified 
together.” 


Our FATHER 
It appears, then, that the Christian life begins 
when one can truly say ‘“‘ Abba, Father.” Here 
lies the secret of successful prayer, as Jesus said, 
[ 34 ] 


THRE ALTER 


“Tf ye shall ask anything of the Father in my 
name he shall give it you” (John 15:16), the 
fact being that one who is really in filiation with 
God cannot insist upon anything that is not ac- 
cording to God’s holy will. 

It was a great thing that Jesus said to His dis- 
ciples, when they asked Him how to pray: ‘“ When 
ye pray say, Our Father.” But can we say it? 
All the felicities of highest heaven are in it. 

I have heard of an old preacher, who arose in 
his pulpit one Sunday morning and announced his 
text as Luke 15: 18, and began to read, “I will 
arise and go unto ” and just there fell into a 
swoon from which he awoke among the saints in 
glory. Think with what transport he must have 
uttered the next words—“My Father ’—in 
heaven! 

The well-beloved Son came all the way from 
His ineffable glory to teach sinners how to say 
those two words; but if we would say them 
worthily when we reach the Father’s house, we 
must be practicing them worthily here and now. 





[ 35 ] 





II 
THE “LIVING” 


“And the younger of them said to his father, 
Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth 
to me. And he divided unto them his living.” 

—LUKE 15:12. 


II 
THE “LIVING” 


OD is behind everything in this world of 
(5 ours. No force works automatically; 
life least of all. “In him we live, and 

move, and have our being.” If my pulse could 


beat once only of itself it would disprove the being 
of God. 


PROVIDENCE 


And by the same token, everything that has to 
do with life is a part of the “living” which we 
have in and from Him. We emphasize that fact 
every time we say, “Give us this day our daily 
bread.” When the Israelites saw manna lying on 
the ground “ plenteous as hoarfrost”’ they did not 
know what it was, but they knew well enough 
where it came from. The manna was miraculous, 
but no more so than our daily bread. 

We speak of the graveyard as “God’s acre”; 
but every field that a farmer tills is “ God’s acre,” 
too. Behold the never-ceasing Miracle of the 
Loaves! Not a grain of wheat would ever sur- 
vive its burial were it not that the Lord of the 
Resurrection takes care of it. He subsidizes all 


1 The etymological definition of the word man-hu is, “ What 
t 


is it?” 
[ 39 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


the forces of air and earth and the waters under 
the earth to provide our living for us. 


PROVIDENCE IMPARTIAL 


And this is done without reference to any merit 
of ours. “He maketh it to rain upon the just 
and the unjust.” ‘Those who are as barren of 
fruitage as “ the wilderness and the solitary place ” 
are nevertheless the recipients of His perpetual 
bounty. The Bolsheviki of Russia have formally 
renounced God; but their consistency is a pinch- 
beck jewel. What would have become of them 
shut up as they were like Elijah in the ravine of 
Cherith, but for the ravens of relief that brought 
them cargoes of breadstuffs, as agents of the lov- 
ing God? 


PROVIDENTIAL OBLIGATIONS 


The first suggestion of Providence is gratitude. 
“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have 
a thankless child!” As far as we are informed 
the Younger son, on receiving his portion of his 
father’s goods, was not moved to acknowledge 
his obligation in any way. He simply took his 
portion and went whistling away to the far coun- 
try. There are people nowadays who “ rob God” 
in the same way (Mal. 3: 8). 

If I give a beggar a penny I expect him to say 
“Thank you.” If I throw a bone to a dog he 


[ 40 ] 


THE LIVING 


will lick my hand. What shall be said then of a 
man who subsists every moment of every day on 
God’s bounty with never a word of acknowledg- 
ment? 


“ For what are men better than sheep or goats— 
That nourish a blind hfe within the brain, 
If knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer?” 


My friend, have you prayed to-day? Think what 
a fatuously unreasonable thing it is, not to be on 
speaking terms with God! 

The second suggestion of Providence is loyalty. 
It is not likely that the Younger son would have 
swung away from his home so jauntily, with his 
“portion of goods” in hand, but for some feeling 
of resentment against the restraints of parental 
authority. Perhaps, all things considered, it was 
just as well that he should go. When a boy—or a 
man—begins to complain against “ the blue laws,” 
and to hanker for freedom to “carry on” accord- 
ing to his own sweet will, nothing can cure him 
so surely and thoroughly as a season of expatria- 
tion. 

It is a true saying: “ Blessings brighten as they 
take their flight.” If the people who find fault 
with Providence were allowed to shift for them- 
selves for, say, a small fraction of a single day, 
they would begin to realize that there’s no place 
like home and no comfort like a Father’s care. 


[ 41 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


Meanwhile, it behooves those who believe in God 
to show their faith by obedience to His righteous 
laws and by a cordial acquiescence in His beneficent 
plans and purposes concerning them. 

One of the classics of American literature is the 
pathetic story The Man Without a Country. 
What poignant memories! What vain regrets! It 
is related of Benedict Arnold that, after years of 
exile spent in the vain endeavor to live down the 
memory of his treason, in his last delirium called 
for the uniform which he had worn in the service 
of his country and died with his hand upon the 
sword that had once wrought valiantly for his 
early faith. 

It is the extreme of folly to neglect God for a 
lifetime in the hope of making amends by a death- 
bed repentance. In a long ministry of more than 
half a century I have never attended a dying sinner 
who did not express sorrow for his sins and cling 
desperately to the forlorn hope of pardon. ‘There 
is indeed no limit to Divine grace, insomuch that 
“ betwixt the saddle and the ground, mercy sought 
is mercy found;” but what a contemptible thing it 
is to serve consistently with the enemy for years 
until confronted by sudden danger and then, in the 
last extremity, like Joab, to seek refuge at the 
horns of the altar! It puts a severe strain on one’s 
broadest conception of the divine Fatherhood— 
relieved only by the story of the penitent thief—to 


[ 42 ] 


THE “ LIVING” 


imagine one burning out the candle of life in the 
service of self, in the fond expectation of flinging 
the charred wick, at the last moment, as an accept- 
able offering in the face of God. 

But such complete forgetfulness of divine Provi- 
dence is not the only offense against it. Fault- 
finding is another and, even among professed 
Christians, not an uncommon one. Not long ago, 
a woman whom I had known for years as a devout 
follower of Christ, overwhelmed by sudden be- 
reavement, refused to be comforted. ‘“‘ How can I 
pray,’ she said, “to the cruel God who has taken 
away my only son, the light of my eyes?” Re- 
bellion! Rank rebellion, not only against God but 
against reason, against the ordinance of nature, 
against death as the gateway of life, against the 
hope of the great home-bringing! God is not “an 
hard man” but a loving Father who makes all 
things, death included, “ work together for good to 
them that love him.” 

Our present life is but an infinitesimal arc of an 
infinite circle. This is the very center of our 
Christian faith. What matters it how the Father’s 
“living ’’ is dispensed to his children in this mo- 
mentary life when an immortality of immeasurable 
eons of felicity is before us? Millionaire or 
mendicant, what matters it? In Christ ye ben 
fylléd.”* “If Christ is yours all things are yours, 

1This is Wycliffe’s rendering of “In Him ye are com- 


plete.” 
[ 43 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


things present, things to come, life, death, all things 
are yours; for ye are Christ’s and Christ is God’s.” 

The discontent of the people is most largely due 
to poverty; and as a rule the blame of poverty is 
laid everywhere but where it belongs. 


“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, 
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” 


But suppose it were rightly attributed to the un- 
equal distribution of God’s “living” ? Riches 
and penury alike have their compensations. 
The Christian key to “competence” is in the 
philosophy of Paul, who maintained his religion 
at the cost of his patrimony: “‘ For I have learned, 
in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. 
I know how to be abased, and I know how to 
abound: everywhere and in all things I am in- 
structed both to be full and to be hungry, both to 
abound and suffer need. I can do all things 
through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Phil. 
4: 11-13). 

It is natural to find fault with the apparent 
partiality of the Father in the distribution of His 
goods; just here is where Christian philosophy and 
Nature seem at odds. The children of Israel for- 
got the Hand that had delivered them from bond- 
age when they found themselves shut up in the 
wilderness. ‘Their daily dole of manna palled on 
them when they remembered the flesh-pots of 


[ 44 ] 


tite LIVING 





Egypt. They forgot their hard taskmasters, the 
whip of scorpions, the impossible tale of bricks 
without straw, and murmured against God. Blame 
them? No, blame the perverse disposition of all 
human kind, even of such as have been called out 
of darkness into Gospel light. Strange that the 
God of Providence should so patiently bear with 
us! 

The third suggestion of Providence is codpera- 
tion. If the Younger son had been accustomed to 
address himself to the business of the farm he 
would have found little or no leisure for reckless 
dreams. “ Satan finds some mischief still for idle 
hands to do.” 

The prodigals of the world are recruited from 
the ranks of its parasites: and for a like reason the 
reproaches that lie against the Church are invari- 
ably traceable to such of its members as, content 
with the meager hope of a personal salvation, stand 
idle in the market-place with folded hands. 


“ There 1s a number of us creep’ 
Into this world to eat and sleep, 
And know no reason why we're born 
But only to consume the corn, 
Devour the cattle, flesh, and fish 
And leave behind an empty dish; 


1This was written by Isaac Watts. It cannot be found, 
however, in “ Watts and Select” or any other of our Hymn 
Books; possibly because no tune sufficiently melancholy could 
be found for it. 
[ 45 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


And if our tombstones, when we die, 
Ben’t taught to flatter and to lie, 
There’s nothing better can be said 
Than that he’s eat up all his bread, 
Drunk up his drink and gone to bed.” 


A. professing Christian should of all men be 
most foremost in recognizing the obligations which 
are involved in Divine providence. Great is his 
portion of the Father’s goods. For in addition to 
what are called “ the common gifts of Providence ” 
he has “the unspeakable gift’ of a special Provi- 
dence, to wit, salvation in Christ. What shall we 
render unto the Father for this Kohinoor out of 
His casket? ‘The calves of our lips? Loyalty to 
His holy law? Aye, more; the unceasing tribute 
of cooperation with Him in the reaping and ingath- 
ering of His harvests. Nothing, nothing is too 
good for Him! What shall we say then to these 
things? 


“Tl go where you want me to go, dear Lord, 
Over mountain and plain and sea; 
I’ll do what you want me to do, dear Lord, 
I'll be what you want me to be.” 


The appointed agency for the conversion of the 
world to truth and righteousness, by means of the 
cooperation of God’s people, is the Church. By 
this is sometimes meant the visible Church, made 
up of all sorts of people professing to be Chris- 

[ 46 ] 


THE “ LIVING” 


tians; at other times, a church within the visible 
Church, made up of true believers in God, as mani- 
fest in Christ “the Lamb of God slain from the 
foundation of the world.” 

The visible Church is set forth by Christ Him- 
self in His parable of the Wheat and the Tares, 
where He says “ The wheat and the tares must 
grow together until the harvest” (Matt. 13: 24— 
30). The invisible Church is designated by 
Christ where, in pursuance of the good confession 
of Peter, “Thou art the Christ the Son of the 
living God,” he said, “On this rock will I build 
my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail 
against it” (Matt. 16:18). 

Obviously, it is easy to find fault with the 
Church visible; not only because it is constituted 
of all kinds, good, bad and indifferent, received in 
the necessity of the case on their own recognizance, 
but because even among sincere professors “ there 
is none perfect, no not one.” A true Christian 
does not profess to be perfect but to be earnestly 
striving after perfection as he finds it in “ the ful- 
ness of the measure of the stature of Christ.” He 
counts not himself “to have apprehended, as 
though he were already perfect,’”’ but reaches forth 
toward “the prize of this high calling of God in 
Christ Jesus.” 

Meanwhile the murmuring of the outside world 
against the inconsistencies of avowed Christians 


[ 47 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


goes on: “ We have mourned unto you and ye 
have not lamented, we have piped unto you and ye 
have not danced; . . . but wisdom ts justified of 
her children” (Luke 7: 31-35). That is to say, 
notwithstanding all the imperfections of church 
members, the Church has ever been and continues 
to be the one only living organism through which 
God works visibly, continuously and irresistibly for 
the betterment of the world and the bringing in of 
the Golden Age when all men shall know the Lord 
as the God of salvation and every knee shall bow 
before Him. | 

This being so, it is the clear duty of every right- © 
thinking man to get into organic connection with 
the Christian Church if he would be known as a 
“laborer together with God.” So much, at least, 
devolves upon him in recognition of the “ share of 
the Father’s goods which falleth to him.” 

Once having sincerely made his “ profession of 
faith,’ nothing remains for you and me but to 
“make our calling and election sure”’ by living as 
becomes living “members of the body of Christ,” 
so assuring our place in the invisible Church whose 
members’ names are written in the Lamb’s Book 
of Life. 

To this end it becomes all “members of the 
Church in good and regular standing” to get busy 
in the work of the Kingdom. A name on an 
ecclesiastical roster is good as far as it goes; but 


[ 48 ] 


THE “ LIVING” 


there are drones in every hive. ‘As the Father 
hath sent me into the world, to seek and to save,” 
said Jesus to His disciples, “so send I you.” ‘Thus 
is marked out clearly the evolution of a Christian 
from a mere beneficiary of the divine bounty into 
a laborer together with God. 


[ 49 ] 





III 
THE YOUNGER SON 


“And not many days after, the younger son 
gathered all together and took his journey.” 
—LUKE I5: 13. 


III 
THE YOUNGER SON 


T is no hard matter to bring this melodrama 
| up to date. A farmer’s boy shut up in a 

valley between the hills, hears the call of the 
world beyond and, like a caged bird, beats his 
wings against the limitations of his narrow life. 
Up in the morning early to do his monotonous 
round of chores; plowing, harrowing, seed-sowing, 
ingathering, day in and day out, year in and year 
out; what sort of a life is this for an ambitious 
youth? The land of adventure calls him. It is 
“the call of the wild.’ He dreams of jostling 
streets and banquet halls and no end of pleasures 
for those who will. He must away! 


““A Boy’s WILL Is THE WIND’s WILL” 


Lot heard the call, as he dwelt in the well- 
watered valley of the Jordan; and, though he knew 
it was the voice of graceless Sodom, he arose and 
pitched his tent toward the city. 

David heard it as he watched his father’s flocks 
in the pastures near Bethlehem: and the fortunes 
of his whole life turned on the moment when, 
tightening his girdle, he said, “I must arise and 
recap eae 

[ 53 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 





In the old-fashioned “ debating societies ” of our 
boyhood we used to discuss the question, ‘ Which 
is preferable, city or country life?’’ and as the 
result of our flamboyant oratory we always arrived 
at the conclusion that life in contact with the sweet 
influences of Nature was preferable because, as 
Cowper wrote, “ God made the country and man 
made the town.” And then as we grew older and 
opportunity offered, we gathered our belongings in 
a handkerchief, like Joseph in the Vicar of Wake- 
field, and followed the well-beaten path to town. 
What wonder? The city is the world’s main 
artery and in the logic of events the farms and 
villages are its tributaries. “All the rivers run 
into the sea.” 


LEAVING HomME 


It is an old, old story. The years may come and 
go, but I shall never forget my last morning in the 
old frontier home: the family prayer in the sitting- 
room; the cowskin trunk tagged for “ Phillips 
Academy, Andover, Mass. ;’” the farewell of broth- 
ers and sisters; the tremulous words of my father, 
“God bless you, son;” the two hands of mother 
on my shoulders, her kiss on either cheek and the 
dew on her eyelashes; the Book she gave me at the 
gate with “The entrance of thy Word giveth 
light ” written on the fly-leaf; the sad attempt at 
fortitude as I mounted the stage with one last 


[ 54 ] 


THE YOUNGER SON 





backward look through misty eyes. Oh, it seems 
but yesterday. Good-bye! 


“ But the tender grace of a day that is dead 
Will never come back to me.” 


It is the course of nature. I watched a brood of 
sparrows as they grew from a mere group of hun- 
gry mouths, red-edged and yellow, until the call 
of the wildwood came and one by one they perched 
on the edge of the nest, spread their wings and 
went twittering forth into life. So do men and 
nations also. Blessings on the old home! But 
its limitations are narrow and parental authority 
is likely to irk the growing youth even as he de- 
claims: 


‘“ My name 1s Norval: on the Grampian hills 
My father feeds his flocks; a frugal swain, 
Whose constant cares were to increase his store, 
And keep lus only son, myself, at home.” 


Yet it is written of the Best of men that He “ in- 
creased in wisdom and stature, and was subject” 
unto His parents (Luke 2:52). He toiled in a 
carpenter shop, content with making wooden plows 
and mending the rickety furniture of the hamlet 
until He was thirty years of age. Then, the fulness 
of time having come, He answered the summons of 
a travailing world that had been ever ringing in 
His ears. 


[ 55 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


“They also serve who only stand and wait.” 


In the case of this Younger son in the parable, 
leaving home was entering into freedom from re- 
straint. He had been “ cabin’d, cribb’d, confined.” 
The uneventful program of the home-life wearied 
him. Impatience had grown into a habit until, like 
the starling in the Sentimental Journey, his soul 
kept crying “I can’t get out!” But he must get 
out! So having a will of his own, he “ gathers all 
together,” shoulders his pack and yonder he goes. 
Farewell to the carking cares of the dreary old 
farm and welcome—what? 

But why did not his father, knowing the perils 
of the world beyond those hills, prevent him? Pos- 
sibly he could not. It may be that, having recently 
come of age, the lad was entitled to his “ portion 
of goods’’: in which case, under the Jewish law, 
parental authority could no longer constrain him. 

At any rate, so far as Divine authority goes, 
every man is practically of age; so that when the 
Father says, “ Thou shalt”? or “ Thou shalt not” 
he can obey or disobey. Man is really the only free 
agent in the universe. All the lower orders of 
life—beasts of the forest, fowls of the air, fishes of 
the sea—are obliged by instinct to obey the law 
of their being; but unfortunately man can do as 
he pleases about it. 

Not many years ago a prominent infidel, in a 


[ 56 ] 


THE YOUNGER SON 


lecture on God’s mistakes, was fond of saying, “ If 
I had been making a world I would have made a 
better one and a better man to live in it. I would 
have made a man who couldn’t go wrong, and a 
world that wouldn’t tempt him.” Not to dwell 
upon the sacrilegious phase of that observation, let 
us look a little into the plain common sense of it. 


How Agsout THE “ BETTER MAN” ? 


What sort of a man would he be who had no 
freedom of choice? A mere homunculus—an 
automaton, wound up to go one way and no other. 
Innocent? Certainly, as innocent as a graven im- 
age or a newel-post, but absolutely without char- . 
acter. For character is the result of trial based on 
choices for good or ill. There is a very real sense, 
therefore, in which every human not only can but 
must.be a “ self-made man.” 

When God made Adam He left room for 
choices. It is written that He created him “in — 
his own likeness.” This means more than that 
man was made merely innocent, that is, negatively 
free from sin. The point at which humanity 
touches Divinity most distinctively is in the posses- 
sion of a sovereign will. The Garden of Eden was 
a scene of perfect peace and beauty; but the gar- 
dener was obliged to “till and keep” it; otherwise 
he would lose it. 

One small item in the tillage of the Garden was 


[ 57 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 





the safeguarding of a particular tree, called “ the 
tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Any 
other tree would have answered for the testing just 
as well. The point was that a ban was put upon 
that particular tree. In the exercise of his sover- 
eign will, Adam chose to disobey. By that act of 
disobedience he “fell” from his high estate of 
innocency and harmony with God. , 

More than that: he lost his opportunity of full 
moral development. For disobedience is sin: and 
one voluntary act is the beginning of a tendency 
and the foundation of a habit which precludes all 
possibility of growing into the complete measure 
of character. Thus, by a single wrong choice, our 
primal progenitor made life an uphill road not only 
for himself but for his children after him. 

One need not insist on the so-called doctrine of 
“ original sin” as laid down in The New England 
Primer: 


“In Adam's fall 
We sinnéd all.” 


The scientific fact of heredity, as established and 
universally conceded in these last days, will answer 
just as well. “The fathers have eaten sour 
grapes;’’ so far there is no difference of opinion; 
and, somehow or other, “ the children’s teeth are 
set on edge.”’ So long as the universal tendency is 
undisputed it matters little how we call the logical 


[ 58 ] 


THE YOUNGER SON 


nexus by which it connects up with those who have 
gone before us. 

The important fact to be emphasized is our 
freedom of choice “ betwixt the worse and better 
reason.” It was for the Younger son to say 
whether he would remain at home, under salutary 
restraint, or gang his ain gait; and he decided to 
go. Notwithstanding heredity and environment, 
fatalistic science and the irresistible logic of Jona- 
than Edwards to the contrary, every man knows 
to the uttermost heights of his reason and the 
lowermost depths of his experience that he is a 
free agent in his moral relations with God, himself 
and his fellow men. 


Anp How Asout THE “ BETTER WoRLD ” ? 


Let us suppose that the making of the world had 
been committed to the distinguished infidel referred 
to, would his world really have been a better world 
to live in? Not better than Paradise, of course; 
but even better than the world as it is? 

Here “thorns infest the ground.” There are 
wars and rumors of war among the nations; family 
feuds; individual pains and sorrows; toilsome days 
and sleepless nights. No doubt if sin had never 
entered the world, it would have been a better 
world to live in: but unfortunately sin is an ac- 
complished fact and the world must be taken not 
for what it might have been but for what it is. 


[ 59 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 





And thorns have their uses: witness Paul’s 
thorn in the flesh (2 Cor. 12: 7-9). The graces 
of character are acquired, as a rule, in the school of 
adversity. “‘ Nochastening for the present seemeth 
to be joyous but grievous: nevertheless afterward 
it yieldeth the peaceable fruits of righteousness 
unto them which are exercised thereby,” that is, to 
such as are wise enough to profit by it. Wherefore, 
“my brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into 
divers temptations; . . . knowing that tribu- 
lation worketh patience, and patience experience, 
and experience hope.” In the words of Milton: 


“ Prosperity conceals our brightest ray; 
As night to stars, woe lustre gives to man.” 


Here emerges the old question, “ Why does not 
God kill the devil?’ The answer is: “ Because, as 
conditions are, the evil one has his place in the 
far-reaching economy of divine grace.”’ Not that 
there is any smallest fraction of goodness in him; 
but his malevolent plans for the undoing of man 
are so overruled by superior wisdom and power as 
to contribute to the betterment of right-minded 
men; just as the tactics of a cunning foe are often 
utilized for the relief of a beleagured city. 

It thus appears that the world is not such a bad 
world after all: certainly not if its worst conditions 
are so subsidized by a gracious God as to make for 
the betterment of willing men. In other words, 


[ 60 ] 


THE YOUNGER SON 


“All things work together for good to them that 
love God.” 


WHo Is To BLAME, THEN? 


Another of the questions propounded by the in- 


fidel referred to is this: “ If God made me as I am, 
and put me into the world such as it 1s, why is 
He not responsible for the outcome? ” 

The answer is at hand: God did not make me 
“as I am” nor the world “as it is.’ He made 
man innocent and free to develop character by 
trial; and He made a pleasant world for him to 
dwell in: so that, if man and his world go wrong 
he has nobody but himself to blame. As things 
are, we are no doubt handicapped by both heredity 
and environment; but, on the other hand, we have 
infinite resources of helpfulness at our command, 
if we choose to take advantage of them. For “if 
God be for us, who can be against us?’”’? And that 
God is for us is evidenced by the supreme fact that 
He has sent His only begotten Son into the world 
to champion our cause. Here is Christ’s promise: 
“Lo, Iam with you alway: I will never leave you 
nor forsake you.” 

And still, we are free to accept Christ or reject 
Him. If one prefers to stand alone and, in vol- 
untary self-dependence, fails to make good, whom 
but himself shall he blame for it? 

Here we leave the Younger son on his way to the 


[ 61 ] 


i 


wv 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


far country. He has chosen to have his fling, heed- 
less of consequences. But even in that far country 
the memory of the old home will follow him. In 
the lone watches of many a night, restless after 
his revels, he will have visions of his father stand- 
ing in the doorway and looking off beyond the 
distant hills, moving his lips in prayer for the re- 
turn of his wayward boy. 

God never leaves Himself “ without a witness,” 
however far His children may wander from the 
right way. “ Whither shall I go from thy spirit? ” 
asks David in one of his despondent hours, “ or 
whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I 
ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make 
my bed in hell, behold thou art there. If I take 
the wings of the morning and dwell in the utter- 
most parts of the sea: even there shall thy hand 
lead me and thy right hand shall hold me. If I 
say, Surely the darkness shall cover me, even the 
night shall be light about me” (Psalm 189: 7— 
11). 

Such is the Father’s love—the love that will not 
let us go! 


[ 62 ] 


IV 
IN THE FAR COUNTRY 


“He took his journey into a far country and 
there wasted his substance with riotous living.” 
—LUKE I5: 13. 


IV 
IN THE FAR COUNTRY 


 f AHE Younger son has now turned his back 
on his father’s house and, with his pack 
over his shoulder, is pursuing his way at 
a swinging gate toward the Land of Self-will. 
Does he look back? Possibly; to wave his hand 
in farewell to an old man standing at the farm gate 
with lips quivering in prayer for his wayward boy. 
But the heart of the vagabond is too full of hope 
for vain regret. The die is cast. The call of 
F’allegro_is ringing in his ears. He is free! Free 
tom the wearying tasks of home? free from the 
vexing restraints of parental authority; free to 
go his ain gait and work his own sweet will! 
Away with melancholy! With fond anticipation 
he hears the alluring voices of those who make 
merry beyond the hills. 


THE WASTREL 
Now he has arrived: and life begins. With 
plenty of money at his command he-finds no diffi- 
culty in making friends. Hail fellow, well met! 
He scatters with an open hand, and sycophants 
wait upon him. 


[ 65 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


The hardest word in our vocabulary to spell and 
pronounce with a cheerful grace is thrift; and lo! 
the secret of worldly prosperity is in it. Million- 
aires know this but their sons are slow to perceive 
it. “Easy come, easy go.” A living that comes 
without earning is soon disposed of. 

The easiest word in our vocabulary is extravg- 
gance: which literally means “ wandering out of 
bounds.” Its common definition is reckless spend- 
ing. This is the world’s malady to-day. We 
Americans are a race of spendthrifts. The habit 
was contracted in war-time and we are finding it 
almost impossible to break off. Every half-grown 
son of wealth must have his “‘ establishment,” every 
workman his flivver. So the waste goes on. 

But there is another sort of waste that is im- 
measurably worse, to wit, the waste of moral 
resource among those who profess fo | bé followers 

of Christ. We are splendid “equipped for serv- 

eh ly 
God has given to every Christian “the por- 
tion of the inheritance that falleth to him.” What 
are we doing with it? If every Christian were true 
to his stewardship the world would soon be falling 
on its knees. But oh, the squandered “ livings,”’ 
the reckless extravagance, the talents wrapped up 
and buried in the ground! And all the while the 
Lord, the real owner, is kept waiting to come into 

His own! 
“Boys, I’ve given up being a good fellow,” said 
[ 66 ] 


IN THE FAR COUNTRY 


one of my classmates at a college reunion. “Ten 
years of it was enough. Patrimony wasted, out- 
look sacrificed, everything gone, I made up my 
mind to turn over a new leaf. And now, after the 
waste of ten golden years, and five more of decent 
living, my conclusion is that it’s better to be a 
square man than a good fellow.” 

The Prodigal has arrived at the same conclusion. 
His purse is empty. He sits in the swine-field, 
ragged and hungry, making out an inventory; by 
which it appears that he is bankrupt. Everything 
is gone. 

Money GONE 


The loss of his money is least of all: for sooner 
or later that must slip through our cold fingers 
anyway. ‘Though a man may be worth a million 
he cannot carry so much as a farthing with him 
through the little wicket-gate. We brought noth- 
ing into the world and it is certain we can carry 
nothing out. 


“Tf thou art rich, thou art poor; 
For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows, 
Thou bear’st thy heavy burden but a season 
And death unloads thee.” 


FRIENDS GONE 


But the Prodigal has lost his friends also. They 
were only fair-weather friends at best; and he 
might have known that in adversity they would 


[ 67 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


forsake him. In one of his pictures Landseer 
represents a wounded stag, athirst, tired out, and 
brought to bay. Where are its companions? 
Yonder they go, over the hills. This is the way of 
the world. 


* “ Friends are like melons; shall I tell you why? 
To find one good, you must a hundred try.” 


No great loss to the Prodigal, if only he had 
made a few substantial friends who would stand 
the test of adversity. Alas, “no man gave unto 
him.” Alone! Forsaken by those who had dipped 
with him in the dish! This is the sting of the 
serpent’s tooth. 


REPUTATION GONE 
Moreover he has lost his reputation. Nor would 
that have been an irreparable loss if only he had 
kept character behind it. 


“Good name in man or woman, dear my lord, 
Is the immediate jewel of their souls.” 


But character is the casket of reputation; so 
that, when both are lost, the man, as Shakespeare 
says, is “ poor indeed.” 


SELF-RESPECT GONE 


And what has become of the young man’s self- 
respect? Gone, hand-in-hand with reputation! 


[ 68 ] 


IN THE FAR COUNTRY 


We are told of a pious New England cobbler 
whose daily prayer was, “ Lord, give me a good 
opinion of myself”; but how can a man respect 
himself unless he really has some adequate reason 
for thinking himself better than a sheep? When 
James Harper was leaving his country home to 
make a fortune his mother in bidding him farewell 
said, “ My son, you have good blood in you: re- 
member that.” But in the hurly-burly of Vanity 
Fair one is ever prone to forget his honorable line- 
age but, worse than that, his Divine birthright as 
made in the likeness of God. 


His Livinc Gone 


But the most lamentable item in the sad inven- 
tory of the Prodigal is the loss of his “ living.” 
He has squandered his patrimony, and with it the 
last remnant of a reasonable claim on his father. 
He is indeed “no more worthy to be called his 
son.” 

An invaluable part of our Christian patrimony is 
ancestral faith; but only so far forth as we make 
it our very own and jealously safeguard it. As 
a mere heirloom it is not worth while. One may 
die spiritually as well as otherwise by leaning too 
persistently on his family tree. The fact that my 
forebears were Christians should, other things 
being equal, assure my following in their steps: 
but piety cannot be transmitted like an entailed 


[ 69 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


estate; and notwithstanding free grace and justifi- 
cation by faith there is no “ unearned increment ” 
in the kingdom of truth and righteousness. Happy 
is the man whose fathers loved the Lord, providing 
he can say: 


“My Lord, my life, My sacrifice, 
My Saviour and my all!” 


The tendency of our time is to belittle everything 
that savors of the past. We forget that the pre- 
sumption is always in favor of the status quo. 
The part of wisdom is to hold fast to what the 
fathers have left us until we are sure that we have 
something better of our own: 


“O how our hearts beat high with joy 
Whene’er we hear that glorious word, 
Faith of our fathers! Holy faith, 
We will be true to thee till death!” 


To lose the religion of one’s ancestors, with no 
fee simple right in a religion of one’s own, is to be 
left insolvent indeed, without God and without 
hope in the world. And this is hell; for hell is 
anywhere without God. Sin in its very essence is 
alienation from a holy God; wherefore continu- 
ance in sin makes the sinful soul its own dungeon 
and every man his own perpetual jailer. 

What is to be done? Is the case a hopeless one? 
Certainly, from every human point of view. It 
was an old time pagan who wrote, “ Easy is the 


[ 70 ] 


IN THE FAR COUNTRY 


descent to Avernus; but to retrace one’s steps and 
reach again the upper air, hoc opus, Mic labor est!” 
There is no conceivable hope of escape save in 
divine interposition. God must “make bare his 
arm” in our behalf, or we are lost. ‘The down- 
ward tendency increases with indulgence in the 
downward way. But with God all things are pos- 
sible (John 3: 16). 


THE PENITENT 


A few years ago the paying teller of one of our 
banks stole a hundred thousand dollars and dis- 
appeared. One morning the papers announced that 
he had been found dead by his own hand in a 
foreign city, with a letter near by saying that 
everything was gone that made life worth living 
and he “ might as well make an end of it.” That 
spells remorse; the haunting spectre of a wasted 
life. 

It was remorse that embittered the heart of Lord 
Byron and moved him in mid-manhood to write: 


“ My days are in the yellow leaf ; 
The flowers and fruits of life are gone; 
The worm, the canker and the grief 
Are mine alone!” 


The gifted pen of Edgar Allan Poe was dipped 
in remorse when, at an early age, he wrote of the 
raven sitting and croaking over his chamber door: 


[71] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


“ And my soul from out that shadow 
Shall be lifted—nevermore!” 


But there is something better than remorse, 
namely, repentance. ‘This is the “sorrow that 
needeth not to be repented of.” It means “ right 
about face.” The Prodigal will not be helped by 
merely grieving over his losses; for, as the Arabs 
say, “ The remembrances of past happiness are the 
wrinkles of the soul.” But suppose he cuts loose 
from his associations and bestirs himself to get out 
of the Far Country, what then? Nostalgia is a 
disease for which there is no other cure but retrac- 
ing one’s steps. 

We think of Judas with abhorrence because he 
betrayed Christ; but wherein did his offense differ 
from that of Peter who thrice denied his Lord, 
saying with an oath, “I never knew him” ? The 
former was moved by avarice; but the latter added 
a most contemptible cowardice to his treachery. 
No sooner did Judas realize the enormity of his 
crime in its tragical dénouement than he hastened 
to the Judgment Hall with his thirty tainted pieces 
of silver and casting them down with the cry “I 
have betrayed innocent blood!” went out and 
hanged himself. That was remorse. Peter, the - 
headstrong coward, under the reproving glance of 
Jesus, “ went out and wept bitterly.” Had his 
sorrow ended in bitter tears, that too would have 


[ 72 ] 


IN THE FAR COUNTRY 





been remorse; but his was the sorrow that needeth 
not to be repented of because it led to an immediate 
mending of his ways. He no longer followed Jesus 
“afar off’’; no longer warmed his hands at the 
eremy’s fire; but fell into line and ever after con- 
tinued faithful unto death. That was repentance. 
True repentance always leads to abandonment of 
sin, It is thus 


“That men may rise on stepping-stones 
Of their dead selves to higher things.” 


Our ASSETS 


We who profess to be Christians are endowed 
with a great “living.” Vast is the portion of 
goods that falleth to us: for the proper use of 
which, as God’s stewards, we are accountable to 
Him. Our responsibility measures up to our priv- 
ilege: Our money is the Lord’s, of course; but 
that least of all. How about our time and energy? 
“Waste not, want not.” Every hour of every day 
is laden with opportunity ; and every opportunity is 
marked “waste” or “investment.” Throw away 
an hour and you squander its possibilities. ‘“ Ye 
are not your own, ye are bought with a price. .. . 
Not with silverand gold . . . but the precious 
blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and 
without spot. . . . Therefore glorify God in 
your body and your spirit which are his.” Inas- 
much as, in this world, we are serving an ap- 

[ 73 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


prenticeship to fit us for service in the world 
further on, it behooves us to be constantly mindful 
of the importance of preparedness. For as this 
life leaves us, so shall eternity find us. For so it 
is written, “ He that is unjust, let him be unjust 
still; and he that is holy, let him be holy still.” 
The one consideration that makes the crossing su- 
premely solemn is that it marks the crystallization 
of character. Beyond the border there is no re- 
turn. “As the tree falleth so also shall it lie.’ So, 
if we have anything to learn, any skill to acquire, 
any duty to perform by way of fitting ourselves 
for usefulness in the Great Beyond, it behooves 
us to be up and doing. This is to lay up one’s 
treasure in bags that wax not old; this is thrift 
that leads on to eternal thriving; this is to be for- 
ever and ever “ rich toward God.” 


[ 74 ] 


V 
AT HIS WITS’ END 


“And when he had spent all there arose a 
mighty famine in that land; and he began to be 
in want. And he went and joined himself to a 
citizen of that country: and he sent him into his 
fields to feed swine. And he would fain have 
filled his belly with the husks that the swine did 
eat: and no man gave unto him.” 

—LUKE 15: 14-16. 


V 
AT HIS WITS’ END 


EHOLD the Prodigal now, sitting on a 
B trough in the swine-field, casting up his 

accounts. He has had his fling and this 
is the miserable end of it. Everything is gone— 
money gone, friends. gone,-reputation_gone,..self- 
respect gone,—all gone! 

I met him-on.the street the other morning, He 
buttonholed me with a plea for help. Y Who are 
your?” ABD “asked. it Nobody,” ‘was the answer. 
“Once I was somebody—but no more.” There 
was something about him that led me to ‘ask, 
at What was your college? ” He nained one of 
our foremost institutions of learning. “ How did 
this come about?” ‘‘ Booze.” “ Everything gone?” 
“Except what you see.” And what I saw was a 

cS ae ee ; 
young man in the twenties, in a threadbare suit, 
red-eyed, hollow-cheeked, “ down and out.” 

Is there no hope in such acase? Surely. Hope 
springs exultant in the human breast. 


“ Hope like the gleaming taper’s light, 
Adorns and cheers our way; 
And still, as darker grows the night, 
Emits a brighter ray.” 


[J 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


While there’s life, there’s hope. Why? Because 
God never leaves Himself “ without a witness ” 
4 (Acts 14: 17). 


CoNSCIENCE AWAKES 


The Younger son in the Far Country still has 
within him a more or less faithful monitor that, in 
the silent watches of the night, when the revels are 
over, reproves him for misbehavior and reminds 
him of the possibility of better things. 

But conscience, like the needle in the mariner’s 

‘compass, is likely to be so. deflected by habit as to 
become a fallible guide: and, as the magnetic 
needle must be regulated by adjustment to the 
Polar Star, so must one’s conscience be kept “ void 
of offense’ by continual adjustment and readjust- 
ment to the authority of the Word of God. 

This is why I have called conscience a “ more or 
less”’ faithful monitor. The worst violations of 
justice in the history of the world have been under 
the direction of conscientious men, as witness the 
Spanish Inquisition and the Massacre of St. 
Bartholomew. The World War was provoked 
and engineered by a man who supposed himself to 
be-an immediate ‘instrument of God.” Hence 
the need of some higher and more infallible author- 
ity than conscience, or “ the inner consciousness,” 
in matters pertaining to ultimate truth and right 
conduct. And where can such authority be 


[ 78 ] 


AT HIS WITS’ END 


found elsewhere than in a revelation direct from 
God? 

It is the prime function of conscience to convict 
of sin; as Shakespeare says: 


“ My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, \ 
And every tongue brings in a several tale, 
And every tale condemns me for a villain.” 


6 


But mere conviction “makes cowards of us all.” 
It leads only to remorse and thence to despair and 
the Bridge of Sighs: 


“ Mad from life’s history, 
Glad to death’s mystery, 
Swift to be hurled— 
Anywhere, anywhere 

Out of the world!” 


There are two kinds of conviction, as there are two 
twilights in every twenty-four hours, one leading 
to ever deepening darkness, the other shining 
brighter and brighter unto the perfect day. When 
conscience leads the sinner to look unto the hills 
from whence cometh his help, and his only help, 
remorse takes on hope and becomes repentance unto 
life; and despair, under the luminous shadow of 
the Cross, is transformed into the joy of salvation. 


Memory REVIVES 


The Younger son, even in his lowest estate, has 
still another incentive to retrace his steps: 


[ 79 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 
a a acl 
“ Oft in the stilly night, i 
Ere slumber’s chain has bound me, 
Fond memory brings the light 
Of other days around me.” 


Here in the swine-field the Younger son recalls the 
privileges and pleasures of his early life and sadly 
contrasts them with his present condition: “ How 
many hired servants of my father’s have bread 
enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!” 
Thus he is slowly but surely ‘“ coming to himself ” 
and to repentance, which is the “sorrow that 
needeth not to be repented of.” 

One of the stories that I heard in my boyhood 
was of a little girl who was carried away by the 
Indians and grew up to womanhood in a wigwam. 
All search was futile for a score of years, when 
news came that she was living in a distant camp. 
Her mother found her there, garbed like an Indian 
maid and indifferent to all persuasive approach. 
At length the mother began to sing the old lullaby, * 
“Hush, my babe, lie still and slumber:”’ and in 
response to that reminder of her childhood the 
heart of the captive was turned homeward. 

But memory alone serves only to further aggra- 
vate the pains of remorse. 


“ For of all sad words of tongue or pen, 
The saddest are these: 
“It might have been, ” 


[ 80 ] 


AT HIS WITS’ END 





The mere recalling of lost privileges and wasted 
opportunities leads but to brooding melancholy. 
There must be a looking away from self, an up- 
ward look, a vision like that of Jacob the forlorn 
fugitive who saw a ladder leading up to a father’s 
love. Then homesickness blends with happy hope, 
as in the song of the Scotch exile: 


“T am far frae my hame, an’ I’m weary aften whiles, 
For the langed-for hame-bringin’ an’ my Father's 
welcome smiles; 
An I'll ne’er be fw’ content, until mine een do see 
The gowden gates o’ heav’n an’ my ain countrie. 
The earth 1s fleck’d wv flowers, mony-tinted, fresh 


an’ gay, 

The birdies warble blithely, for my Father made 
them sae; 

But these sights an’ these soun’s will as naething 
be to me, 


When I hear the angels singin’ in my ain countrie. 
* * 2 2 * * * x 


Sae little noo I ken, o’ yon blesséd bonnie place, 

I only ken it’s hame, whaur we shall see His face; 

It wad surely be eneuch for ever mair to be 

In the glory o’ His presence im oor ain countrie. 

Like a bairn to its mither, a wee birdie to its nest, 

I wad fain be gangin’ noo, unto my Saviour’s 
breast, 

For He gathers in His bosom witless, worthless 
lambs like me, 

An’ carries them Himsel’, to His ain countrie. 


[ 81 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 
cena ae BO Ua Saf PAB TRS ar ATCA WAR ESSER SDE ACO DAD ICAL AT EMEA WSEAS FET A Aa AA 

He’s faithfw’ that hath promised, He’ll surely come 
again, 

He’ll keep His tryst wi’ me, at what oor I dinna 
ken; 

But He bids me still to wait, an’ ready aye to be, 

To gang at ony moment to my ain countrie. 

Sae I’m watching aye, an’ singing o’ my hame as I 
wait, 

For the soun’ing o’ His fitfa’ this side the gowden 
gate ; 

God gie His grace to ilka ane wha’ listens noo to 
me, 

That we a may gang in gladness to oor ain coun- 
trie.” 


THE WIRELESS MESSAGE 


Another influence in the Prodigal’s favor was 
prayer: not his own, however. It goes without say- 
ing that his father was a praying man. As the old 
man stood in his doorway, looking off beyond the 
hills toward the far country, he no doubt often 
lifted his heart and moved his lips in fervent sup- 
plication to the God of all grace in behalf of his 
wayward boy. It is inconceivable that the Prodigal 
did not know this and at times feel it. 

What is prayer but a wireless message that not 
only speeds to heaven but fills theéther in be- 
tween? It is as mysterious as radio. ‘The in- 
tercessory plea of parental suppliants is not in- 
frequently keyed to the palpitation of hearts beyond 
the seas. The story of the bearded sailor who 


[ 82 ] 


AT HIS WITS’ END 


knocked at a cottage door and said to the gray- 
haired woman who opened it, “ Mother, you have 
prayed me home,” is no fable. It happens every 
day. 

Great is the power of intercession! A man once 
in Capernaum was so paralyzed that when he heard 
that Jesus was working miracles in the town he 
could do nothing to reach Him, even had he been 
so disposed. But he had four good friends who 
carried him on a litter and let him down through 
the roof at the feet of the Great Physician. Where- 
upon, it is written, He “ seeing their faith ” healed 
him. Observe, it was not his faith but theirs that 
Jesus saw. By this token let interceding parents 
find hope in importunity. 


“Down’t stop praying, the Lord is nigh; 
Don’t stop praying, He'll hear your cry!” 


His covenant is Yea and Amen: “I will be a 
God to you and to your children after you.” ‘The 
trial of faith is involved in this tarrying of His. 
When Mary and Martha sent word to Him that 
their brother was desperately ill, “he abode two 
days still in the same place where he was,” but not 
because He was indifferent to their plea. “ The 
vision is yet for an appointed time 
though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely 
eome ~ \( Hab. 2:'3). 

On the fly-leaf between the Old and New Testa- 


[ 83 ] 


. THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


ments of my Bible are these words: “A seeking 
sinner finds a seeking Saviour,” written fifty years 
ago by one who knew, one who lingered long in the 
Far Country to find all his doubts and misgivings 
put to shame at last by the waiting love of God. 

But still it remains for the Prodigal to act for 
himself. 


THE Hoty SPIRIT 

Back of all the gracious, “ hame-bringing ” in- 
fluences in this world of ours is the Spirit of the 
loving God. Conscience, memory and intercessory 
prayer are merely channels and agencies through 
which He works upon the hearts of men. Nearer 
still is His personal approach. He speaks, He 
persuades, He urges: “ Come now, saith the Lord, 
and let us reason together: though your sins be as 
scarlet they shall be white as snow, though they 
be red like crimson they shall be as wool.” There 
are times when every wanderer hears the voice, 
whether he traces it to its Divine source or not. 


“ These fond desires which in thee burn, 
Were kindled by His grace.” 


It is the official function of the Holy Ghost, as 
the Executive of the Kingdom of Christ, to take 
of the things of Jesus and show them unto us 
(Read John 16:1-15). We have much to say of 
the Father’s love and of the Saviour’s love, but how 


[ 84 ] 


AT HIS WITS’ END 


seldom we speak of “the love of the Spirit” 
(Rom. 15:30). Yet He is forever drawing us 
with cords of love and inclining the hearts of the 
expatriated to take the homeward way. 

One may “ resist the Spirit”; as, indeed we all 
do when, despite His drawings toward truth and 
righteousness, we prefer to continue in sin (Acts 
ROL). 

Or we may “ grieve the Spirit,” as a child grieves 
its mother by persistent disobedience: and what a 
sidelight we have, in that figure of speech, into the 
loving heart of God! (Eph. 4: 80). 

And, alas, one may ultimately “quench the 
Spirit’ (1 Thess. 5:19). The resisting and griev- 
ing may go on until this heavenly Friend departs 
from us. This is “the unpardonable sin”; un- 
pardonable in the very nature and necessity of the 
case, since to be “ without God” is also to be 
“without hope.” But inasmuch as the unpardon- 
able sin leaves one in utter indifference to spiritual 
things, the least remnant of regret or the smallest 
fraction of desire is still evidence of hope. 
Forsitan scintilla! ‘The lingering spark may yet 
enkindle, in the embers of a sluggish soul, the reso- 
lution to “ arise and go.” 

One of the first of the recorded words of God 
is this: “ My Spirit shall not always strive with 
man” (Gen. 6:3). And one of the last is this: 
“The Lord . . . is longsuffering to us-ward, 


[ 85 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 





not willing that any should perish but that all 
should come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9). It 
thus appears that the Lord of divine patience may 
be worn out by oft repeated refusal or long con- 
tinued indifference. ‘‘ Behold, I stand at the door 
and knock,” He says. “If any man hear my voice 
and open the door I will come in to him and will 
sup with him and he with me.” So then, the 
door must be opened from within; and none but the 
man within can open it. 

A child who had been gazing intently at Tissot’s 
picture of the hungry Prodigal sitting hopelessly in 
the swine-field cried out, “Oh, why doesn’t he go 
straight home?” Why, indeed? I wonder if 
some one, weary of the far country, is now reading 
these lines of mine? If so, why doesn’t he go 
straight home? The Father’s house and heart are 
open to him. 

Meanwhile, it behooves the Prodigal’s friends to 
keep on praying for him. 


“ Prayer moves the Hand that moves the world 
To bring salvation down.” 


The “lapsed masses’ are not beyond the grace of 
God. The “submerged tenth,” aye, even the sink- 
ing swimmer, may be rescued if the coast guards 
are faithful with the life-line. 

Wherefore to your knees, O Israel! Pray with- 
out ceasing, husbands for wives, parents for chil- 


[ 86 ] 


AT HIS WITS’ END 





dren, friends for friends. God loves our impor- 
tunity, our persistency, our faith. In due time He 
will hear and answer. His Covenant with His 
people is yea and Amen. 


“ More things are wrought by prayer 
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy 
voice 
Rise lke a fountain for me night and day. 
* « * * 2* 2 * * 


For so the whole round earth is every way 
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.” 


Wherefore let us be faithful in our watch-tow- 
ers, knowing that a great happiness awaits the life- 
Savers; as it is written, “ They that be wise shall 
shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they 
that turn many to righteousness as the stars, for- 
ever and ever.” And let us keep on praying for 
those who have not yet accepted Christ. 


[ 87 ] 





VI 
RIGHT ABOUT FACE 


“And when he came to himself,—’ —LuKE 15:17. 


VI 
RIGHT ABOUT FACE 


r “HERE is no such thing, they say, as an 
indivisible unit. The uttermost atom 
that has been discovered is composed of 

subatoms. God Himself is a Tri-unity. It would 

be strange if man, His masterpiece, created in His 
likeness and after His image, were indivisibly one. 

In fact, a man is always two men, a better and a 

meaner self. The original man in the Garden of 

Eden was “ divided betwixt two,” one of him look- 

ing toward the tree of life and the other toward 

the tree of knowledge. Out of that divergent look, 
as Milton says, “came death into the world and 
all our woes.” 


THE GRAPPLE 

In the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the city 
of New York there is a colossal group of statuary 
entitled The Two Natures, in which a man’s nobler 
self is represented wrestling with his other and 
meaner self. This suggests a great psychological 
fact. 

It is safe to say that a conflict of emotions was 
going on in the breast of the Prodigal when he set 


[ 91 ] 


‘ 

at 
} 

f 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


out for the far country with his pack over his 
shoulder: One of his selves pleading to continue 
on the old farm, the other intent upon “ seeing the 
world.” And afterward, when the famine over- 
took him, these two had more than once to face 
each other and fight out the problem whether to 
remain in the swine-field or go back to the father’s 
house. 

The same sort of struggle goes on in every man. 
“ Hard pounding, gentlemen,” said Wellington at 
Waterloo; but here is harder pounding for you 
and me; and all heaven depends on the way we 
“carry on” and finish it. 

At this point let us listen to Paul: “ For I know 
that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good 
thing: for to will is present with me; but how to 
perform that which is good I find not. For the 
good that I would, I do not: but the evil which 
I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I 
would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin 
that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that, 
when I would do good, evil is present with me. 
For I delight in the law of God after the inward 
man: But I see another law in my members, 
warring against the law of my mind, and bringing 
me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my 
members. O wretched man that I am! who shall 
deliver me from the body of this death?”’ (Rom. 
7: 18-24). 

[ 92 ] 


RIGHT ABOUT FACE 





THE DousBLE HANDICAP 


We, of ourselves, are at a great disadvantage in 
this campaign. I say nothing of “ original sin”; 
the scientific doctrine of heredity, as has already 
been said, will answer just as well. Our bitterest 
foes are our forebears. “The fathers have eaten 
sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on 
edge.” Account for it as you please, it is an in- 
disputable fact that our natural tendency, when at 
the crossroads, is to choose the wrong way. 

Our environment also is against us. To follow 
the fashion is our natural bent; and the fashion is 
a bad one. “Is this vile world a friend to grace, 
to help us on to God?” Everybody knows other- 
wise. “The friendship of the world is enmity 
with God” (James 4:4). One of our oldest 
hymns (written by Andrew of Crete, about 700 
A. D.) runs on this wise: 


“ Christian dost thou see them 
On the holy ground, 
How the powers of darkness 
Compass thee around? 
Christian dost thou feel them, 
How they work within, 
Striving, tempting, luring, 
Goading into sin?” 
The mark of true greatness, as Macaulay says, ~ 
“is to rise above one’s environment and prove one’s 


self superior to circumstances.” But how is this 
bagi [ 93 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


possible? What hope is there for even the bravest 
struggler, when the Halts are so distinctly against 
him? 


Gop TO THE RESCUE 


But suppose God lends an everlasting arm? “If 
God be for us, who shall be against us?” And 
the Gospel assures us that, in the irresistible might 
of the ever present Christ, He stands ready to help. 
He forces this interposition upon none, but invari- 
ably answers all who call upon Him. It is for our 
sovereign wills to determine whether we will de- 
pend upon ourselves or upon Him. 


“ He giveth day; thou hast thy choice 
To walk in darkness still.” 


VIcTORY IN DEFEAT 


It is thus, if ever, that the sweet flower of vic- 
tory is plucked from the prickly thistle of defeat. 
One of the rude poetasters says: 


“Tn battle or business, whatever the game, 
In love or in logic, ’tis ever the same, 
In the struggle for fame or the grapple for pelf, 
Let this be your motto—Rely on yourself.” 


But that way lies failure. In the pursuit of the 
noblest and best, experience proves that _self-reli- 
ance is a broken reed on which, if a man lean, it 
will pierce ‘through his hand. 


[ 94 ] 


RIGHT ABOUT FACE 


The crisis of life is picturesquely set forth in the 
story of Jacob wrestling with the Angel at the 
brook Jabbok. Up to that eventful hour he had 
been a self-reliant man and far and away the 
meanest of the patriarchs; but then and there the 
matter came to a final issue. ‘‘ There wrestled a 
man with him until the breaking of the day . 
and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint 
as he wrestled with him.” ‘Thrown at last, he 
arose a cripple and a new man! He was knighted 
in his surrender: “Thy name shall be 
Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God 

and hast prevailed.” 

In quoting from Paul a moment ago we did him 
an injustice, in not hearing him to the end. After 
that desperate cry of his, “O wretched man that I 
am, who shall deliver me from the body of this 
death? ’—in which we see him sinking like a 
strangling swimmer with a corpse fastened about 
his neck—he “comes to himself” with another 
cry, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” 
He has found his helper; and thenceforth not life, 
nor death, nor principalities nor powers can prevail 
against him, Old Saul of Tarsus, his meaner self, 
is dead; and Paul the Apostle is born, a living 
man! 

In the light of that experience we can under- 
stand what Paul means when he says: “ For I, 
through the law am dead unto the law, that I might 


[ 95 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 





live unto God. I am crucified with Christ: never- 
theless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: 
and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by 
the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and 
gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). And again, 
“Tt is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with 
him, we shall also live with him” (2 Tim. 2:11)... 
And again, ‘“ For the love of Christ constraineth 
us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, 
then were all dead: and that he died for all, that 
they which live should not henceforth live unto 
themselves but unto him which died for them and 
rose again” (2 Cor. 5: 14-15). 

No man ever reaches his best estate until he 
graduates out of self-reliance into faith. In the 
parable this is designated by the phrase, “ Coming 
to himself.” The turning point in the Prodigal’s 
life was when he saw the folly of his profligacy 
and resolved that his higher nature should have the 
upper hand of his meaner self. 

But he knew that, when that resolve was made, 
everything still depended on the attitude of his 
father toward him. His faith in his father’s love 
was but a tremulous thing, like a reed shaken in the 
wind; venturing on no larger hope than to be 
received ‘‘as an hired servant’; but his father’s 
love was larger than he dreamed, a love that would 
not quench the smoking flax nor break the bruised 
reed. His little faith, under his father’s care, was 


[ 96 ] 


RIGHT ABOUT FACE 


destined to grow, like a grain of mustard seed, 
until all the singing birds of a happier, better life 
would be lodging in the branches of it. 

Blessed is the man who knows when and how to 
take advantage of a little faith! From small be- 
ginnings all great issues flow. Good impulses used 
at the right moment lead on to character and use- 
fulness; wasted opportunities make up the sum and 
substance of wasted lives. 

On the shield of an old Saxon knight was the 
picture of a hand reached up and a hand reached 
down to clasp it and over them the legend, “ Will, 
God, and I can!” Here is an irresistible union; 
the will of a man, impotent in itself, reaching up to 
the power of a loving God and becoming omnipo- 
tent! So it is written, ‘ I can do all things through 
Christ which strengtheneth me.” 

This is the great discovery that one makes when 
he “ comes to himself ”: that.is,.when realizing his 
sin.and_ helplessness .he.resolves to accept Christ as 
“the arm of the Lord made bare ”’ to help him. 

So long as Luther relied upon the saving merit 
of monastic rites and ceremonies he was without 
assurance of salvation: he found unalloyed peace 
when he cast himself wholly and unreservedly on 
the saving power of Christ. In one of his sermons 
he says, “If you knock on my breast and ask, 
*Who lives here?’ I answer, ‘Once on a time a 
man named Martin Luther lived here; but he has 


[ 97 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


moved out and now Christ liveth in me.’” To be 
able to speak in that manner is to stand upon the 
highest summit of the Christian life: the old self 
being crucified with Christ and the new and better 
self alive,—triumphantly and forevermore alive 
unto God! 

The appeal is to our better nature, to everything 
hopeful and high-minded within us. Whining 
ceases. God does His best; our part is to co- 
operate with Him. 

It is thus that we rise to higher things: never 
“attaining” or quite “ apprehending” but always 
“reaching forth and pressing toward the mark for 
the prize of the high calling of God in Christ 
Jesus.” 

His stimulating call is always, “Come up 
higher!” Higher, ever higher! The golden mile- 
stone will be reached when we finally attain unto 
His likeness; and that will never be until we awake 
and see Him as He is. 


[ 98 ] 


Vil 
A GOOD RESOLUTION 


“He said, How many hired servants of my 
father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I 
perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my 
father.’—LUuKE 15: 17-18. 


Vil 
A GOOD RESOLUTION 


, YE left the Prodigal in a tight place. He 

who quit his home so jauntily a while 

ago, dreaming dreams of a merry life, 

is reduced to the last extremity of shameful pov- 

erty and helplessness, feeding swine and looking 

with covetous eyes on the very husks given them 

to eat! What shall he do? Go on at this rate or 

retrace his steps? It is no easy matter to decide 
either way: but necessity is upon him. 


“There is a tide in the affairs of men 
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune: 
Omitted, all the voyage of their life 
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.” 


How often we stand thus, at the crossing of the 
ways where, as it is written, we can hear a Voice 
behind us saying “ This is the way; walk ye in it” 
(Isa, 30: 4). en ARNO La dae Se. 

It is precisely such moments that determine 
destiny. What is required now? Resolution—to 
“screw one’s courage to the sticking point.” 

They say “ hell is paved with good resolutions.” 


[ 101 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


That depends. With resolutions? Yes; promises 
made and never kept; but not with good resolu- 
tions: A good resolution involves three essential 
factors. Our whole being conspires to frame it. 


‘MIND 

To begin with, our intellectual powers are in- 
volved. ‘The Gospel must seem reasonable before 
one can reasonably accept it. “‘ He that cometh to 
God,” for example, “must believe that he is: ” 
but how can one believe in anything at which rea- 
son revolts? Hence the necessity of thinking out 
the great problems of the spiritual life. 

Our doubts are due to ineffectual thinking. The 
man who boards a train for anywhere in particular 
would not expect to reach his destination if he 
impatiently debarked at the first water-tank along 
the way. It is this sort of mental travelling that 
makes agnostics. We arrive nowhere because we 
think out nothing to the end. We_lack convictions. 
because we are content with mere impressions. An 
opinion is the blighted seed of a principle. One 
who looks long enough into the face of any truth 
is sure to assent to it. Certainly, one who bravely 
and persistently faces the problem of all problems, 
“What think ye of Jesus which is called the 
Christ?” is certain to arrive at the conclusion that 
He was precisely what He claimed to be, namely, 
the only begotten and co-equal Son of God. 


[ 102 ] 


A GOOD RESOLUTION 


CONSCIENCE 


‘But intellectual conviction is not enough. The 
poet who wrote “ The mind’s the standard of the 
man’ was a near-sighted psychologist. The 
Golden Age of philosophy in Athens was the iron 
age of moral character. The two young men who 
were convicted some short while ago of a nameless 
crime in Chicago were college men, top-heavy with 
the learning of the schools. Thus it appears that 
before one can rightly decide any problem what- 
ever he must be satisfied that what is proposed is 
right. Here is where conscience comes in. 

And every man has a conscience; an inward 
monitor which, as Plato says, “ enables him to dis- 
cern between the worse and better reason ’’; or, as 
Paul says, “ accuses or else excuses him.” 

It cannot be doubted that the Prodigal had re- 
cently been looking in upon himself. He was 
aware of his misbehavior: but that did not help 
him to budge an inch. There he sat, uncomfort- 
able but inactive. Conscience is a fine irritant but, 
of_itself, gets us nowhere. It leaves us hesitant 
and trembling at the crossways, “letting ‘I dare 
not’ wait upon ‘I would’.” ‘Thus, as Hamlet says, 
“Conscience doth make cowards of us all.” I do 
not believe that anywhere there lives a man familiar 
with the Gospel who does not know and inwardly 
confess that to follow Christ is the right thing to 


[ 103 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 





do; but it is quite another thing to boldly rise up 
and follow Him, whithersoever He may choose 
to lead. 


RESOLUTION 


As we have seen, a man must not only be con- 
victed of sin but convinced of the reasonableness 
of the opposite course before he can be fully dis- 
posed to take it. Our religion calls for nothing 
that is not conformable to common sense. “ Come 
now, saith the Lord, and let us reason together.” 
Conviction of truth is the basis of character. “As 
a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” 

We are bound to think, and to do our own think- 
ing. Here is where the parable of the wayward 
son parts company with that of the piece of silver, 
an insensate thing for which the only thinking must 
be done by the woman who lost it. No man is at 
liberty to farm out his thinking to other men. As 
rational beings, capable of “thinking God’s 
thoughts after Him,” we are responsible for our 
mental and moral processes and for their conse- 
quent decisions and results. 

The parable of the lost sheep makes a nearer 
approach to that of the Prodigal, in the fact that 
the lost creature is sensible of its condition though 
incapable of willing to return or finding the home- 
ward way. ‘The good shepherd, in his endeavor 
to seek and find, has no assistance save the hope- 


[ 104 ] 


A GOOD RESOLUTION 


less bleating of the lost one. Nevertheless he seeks 
until he finds it: 


“ But all thro’ the mountains thunder-riven, 
And up from the rocky steep, 
There arose a glad cry to the gates of heaven 
‘Rejoice, I have found my sheep!’ 
“And the angels echoed around the throne 
‘Rejoice! for the Lord brings back his own!’ ” 


But being convinced_is not being moved. Our 
intellectuals are not dynamic. The three funda- 
mental facts of Christianity are so reasonable that 
it is difficult to see how any reasonable man can 
reject them. First: the Incarnation, which is 
simply _God’s going out to seek the lost. Second: 
the Atonement, which is the crowning of His quest 
with the proffer of a free salvation. ‘Third: the 
Resurrection, which is the return of the divine 
Seeker with the lost under the lapel of His cloak. 
All three are mysteries; yet all are reasonable and 
precisely what should be expected of a loving God. 

Nevertheless 


“ He that complies against his will, 
Is of his own opimon still.” 


The mind itself has no motor. To have an in- 
tellectual apprehension of truth is no guaranty of 
corresponding action. The Greek poet Theocritus 
tells of a fisherman who dreamed that he had taken 
goldfish in his net but, on awaking, complained 


[ 105 J 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 





that they had “swum out through the holes of his 
eyes.” Our opinions, even our intellectual and 
conscientious beliefs, have a way of escaping in 
like manner, without being translated into life. 

“ Faith without works is dead;” that is, it is 
nothing at all. Thirty-nine articles in a creed plus 
one hundred and seven right answers in a catechism 
are valueless unless yoked up with volition and 
experience. Mere knowledge is static, quiescent, 
immovable. It must have a fire kindled under it 
before it can get anywhere, or push or draw any- 
thing. And here is where the will comes in. 


ACTION 


It was possible, no doubt, for God to make some- 
thing in the semblance of a man without the equip- 
ment of a sovereign will: but that something would 
have been merely a manikin and in nowise “ after 
his own likeness.” The lower orders of life can 
only go as their Creator decrees; but man, when 
God says “ Thou shalt,” can answer “I will not!” 
At the crossways he is at liberty to choose for him- 
self whether he will take the right or the wrong 
way. 

Our destiny for an eternal better or worse is 
determined by the proper use of this freedom. 
Whether it shall lead to heaven or hell depends on 
how we interpret and act upon it. 

There are those who regard it as a mere license 


f 106 J 


A GOOD RESOLUTION 





to play fast and loose with truth and morality: 
Consequently as “ free thinkers ” they become wild 
rovers of the sea. ‘There are others who define 
freedom as “ perfect obedience to perfect law’”’; 
and accordingly they do their thinking within the 
limitations of intellectual law and endeavor to live 
and act within the boundaries of divine authority. 

There are some who insist on the exercise of 
personal liberty without any control beyond that 
of their “inner consciousness,” or any considera- 
tion of communal rights. There are others who 
realize that individual freedom ends where social 
freedom begins, and that all freedom whatsoever 
is qualified by the reasonable claims of God. 

The Prodigal in the swine-field is mulling over 
problems like these. His mind and conscience are 
at work and his sovereign will is struggling to act. 
He knows what is right and what is reasonable. 
The question is, What will he do? He is inclined 
to go home; but inclination is not resolution and 
resolution is not action. He says at length, “I will 
arise and go;”’ but saying so does not make it so. 
He rises and sets out. It still remains, however, 
to see whether or no his resolution is a good one. 
He has miles before him, over hill and down dale. 
Will he hold out? 

He trudges on, day after day, hungry and weary, 
until at length he comes within sight of his father’s 
house—and there he halts! But his father sees 


[ 107 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


him, knows him, comes out to meet him “ while he 
is yet a great way off,” falls on his neck and kisses 
him, throws an arm around the faint and weary 
boy and helps him on! 

What does that mean? If it means anything, it 
means that it takes God to round out resolution. 
It is useless to say “ Hold on, hold fast, hold out; ” 
-a man must have something to hold on to. In 
other words, God must be taken into the reckon- 
ing. When our will is yoked up with His, there’s 
no such word as “ fail.”” He always comes out to 
meet the returning wanderer while “yet a great 
way off.” “ All’s well that ends well.” “If God 
be for us, who shall be against us? ” 

But where shall we find God? In Christ, who 
said, “No man cometh unto the Father but by 
me.” Christ is God coming out to. meet the sinner 
and offering him an omnipotent arm to lean on. 
Thus buttressed he can confidently say, “I know 
whom I have believed and am persuaded that he 1s 
able to keep that which I have committed unto him 
against that day.” 

We are all the while choosing “ betwixt the 
worse.and better reason.” Life is made up of 
choices. But let us make no mistake; inclinations 
are not choices; and choices are not resolutions 
unless carried out; and resolutions are not finally 
approved as good until they land us across. the 
threshold of the Father’s house. 


[ 108 ] 


VIII 
A POOR PRAYER 


“And [I] will say unto him, Father, I have 
sinned against heaven and before thee, and am 
no more worthy to be called thy son: make me 
as one of thy hired servants.” —LUKE 15: 18, 19. 


Vill 
A POOR PRAYER 


HE Younger son is on his way back to 

his father’s house. No luggage hampers 

him; no scrip nor girdle is needed. to 

contain the meager remnants of his “ living.” He 

is AV vagabond, hungry | and ‘ragged, with resolution 
tugging at his heartstrings. 

Will he arrive? That remains to be seen. “ Let 
not him that putteth on the harness boast as he 
that taketh it off.” 

On his way over weary stretches of hill and dale 
he composes and rehearses the appeal which he 
proposes to make on reaching home: “I will say 
unto my father, Father, I have sinned against 
heaven and in thy sight and am no more worthy 
to be called thy son 

So far so good: every word is true to the cir- 
cumstances of his case. He 1s unworthy: so un- 
worthy that any welcome that awaits him must be 
wholly gratuitous. A conviction like this is well 
on toward repentance. Up to this point his prayer 
is very like that of the publican, “ God be merciful 
to measinner!” The only way to Heaven is over 
the Hill of Repentance: and under the shadow of 
the Cross; or, as Wesley used to put it: 


Pi J 





THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


“T the chief of sinners am, 
But Jesus died for me.” 


One of the faults of our time is the minimizing 
of sin. We rarely hear nowadays of “the exceed- 
ing sinfulness of sin.” It is no longer “any want 
of conformity unto or transgression of the divine 
law,” but a casual mistake, a misfortune, a con- 
stitutional infirmity. ‘Theft is not plain stealing 
any more but “kleptomania”’; and old-fashioned 
drunkenness is “ dipsomania.” ‘The Prodigal’s con- 
fession is ruled out: so far from having sinned 
against heaven and in his. father’s sight, he is 
merely a_victim.of.conditions.in.the Far Country, 
and must be treated accordingly, with extreme 
sympathy and indulgent care. 

But this Prodigal was right: he had sinned— 
sinned against heaven and in his father’s sight— 
and was no more worthy to be called his son. 
Such an honest confession is good for the soul; 
for as Solomon says, “ He.that_covereth his sins 
shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and for- 
saketh them shall have mercy” (Prov. 28:18). 
And, as John writes, “If we confess our sins, he 
is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to 
cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 
Ue). 

If only the -young.man had stopped there! But 
he went on, “I pray thee make me as one of thy 


[ 112 ] 


A POOR PRAYER 


hired servants: ” and that addendum made his sup- 
plication-.a-poor--prayer,,.. because, as thus formu- 
lated, it was an unworthy one. 

‘In our approach to God it behooves us to re- 
member that He is the infinitely Holy One who has 
been justly offended by our sins. Hence the ne- 
cessity of a reverent posture. But we are never to 
forget that ‘ we have an Advocate ‘with the Father, 
even Jesus Christ the righteous,” in whose name we 
may “approach boldly unto the throne of grace,” 
assured that ‘‘ whatsoever we shall ask of the 
Father in his name” (John 15: 16) will surely be 
done unto us (Heb. 4: 16). 


No SELF-RESPECT 


For one thing, this plea indicated that the 
Prodigal had no just conception of his own value 
in his father’s sight. No matter how low a sinner 
may have fallen through reckless living in the Far 
Country, there is still in him a lingering spark of 
the Divine likeness which keeps him “ respectable,”’ 
that is, worthy of respect, his own and Syst eagy 
else’s. 

If Isaac Watts, when he wrote: 


“ Great God, how infinite Thou art, 
What worthless worms are we!” 


meant that a man, even at his worst, is of no more 
importance than a crawling thing in the Divine 


[ 113 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


sight, he was a long way from reason and the mind 
of God. Three times in Scripture man is likened 
to a worm; once when Bildad the Shuhite was 
reproving Job for hoping to be justified (Job 
25:6), again when David mourned that God had 
forsaken him (Psalm 22: 6), and still again when 
the Lord said, “ Fear not, thou worm Jacob, for 
I am with thee” (Isa..41: 14). The two for- 
mer were instances of mistaken judgment and, in 
the third case, the word was significant, not of 
worthlessness but of weakness and of encourage- 
ment to lean on God. 

Humility is one thing, servility another. The 
former is best defined by John Milton as “ that 
lofty lowliness of mind which is exalted by its own 
abasement: ”’ the latter by Dickens in the con- 
temptible character of Uriah Heep. It is right 
that a man should approach his Maker with bowed 
head and contrite heart, yet let him ever be mind- 
ful of the fact that by creation he is only “a little 
lower than the angels,” and that there is hope unto 
the uttermost, as it is written, “‘ Him that cometh 
unto me I will in no wise cast out.” 


No AMBITION 


It is better to aim hopefully at the sun than to 
be so hopeless as to have no feather on one’s shaft. 
As a rule, we get what we strive for. I never see 
a group of Italians at work under a “ boss” with- 


Grete, 


A POOR PRAYER 


out wondering why they are apparently so content 
with a shovel when each might so easily be his 
own “ padrone”? For there’s always more “ room 
at the top” than anywhere else. It is the lack of 
ambition on the part of our “ common workmen ” 
that keeps their ranks full: and the fact that there 
are sO many minimum Christians in our churches 
is to be accounted for in the same way. 

The Prodigal asked to be treated merely “as an 
hired servant.” In the name of all warrantable 
pride had he not been surfeited with that sort of 
thing when he went and hired himself out as a 
swineherd to a citizen of the Far Country? Man, 
hold up your head! The apostle Paul was humble, 
so humble that he called himself “the chief of 
sinners ”’; but, by the same token, he was never for- 
-getful of divine origin and his “high calling in 
Christ Jesus.” Wherefore, my friend, whatever 
may have happened in our case, God help us to 
quit ourselves like men. 

It is easy to be a fair-to-middling sort of Chris- 
tian. It has been wisely observed that the Good 
is the worst enemy of the Best. The curse of the 
Church is satisfaction with mediocrity. ‘To be 
“saved, so as by fire,” like righteous Lot, is obvi- 
ously better than to perish in Sodom; but to go 
swinging through the gates with “an abundant 
entrance’ into the Celestial City, is far more 
worthy of a full-grown man. 


[ 115 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


No ADEQUATE FaITH 


This son had been brought up in a kind father’s 
house and yet was uncertain as to what sort of 
reception awaited him. It was inevitable that any 
such misgiving as to his father’s love would clip 
the wings of his prayer. He “knew not what to 
ask for as he ought,’ because he questioned his 
father’s willingness to give. ‘‘ He that cometh to 
God must believe that he is, and that he is a re- 
warder of them that diligently seek him.” 

God is a great giver. He delights to give 
abundantly to those who trust Him. ‘“‘ Open thy 
mouth wide,” He says, “and I will fill it” (Psalm 
81:10). I wonder if David, when he wrote that, 
was thinking of something he had seen while 
watching his flocks among the hills—an eagle’s nest 
and a hungry brood with open bills greeting the | 
mother bird on her return with the day’s rations? 
In any case, such should be our sense of depend- 
ence on a kind Providence and faith in His loving 
care. 

It is related that one of the soldiers of Alex- 
ander the Great who had distinguished himself in 
battle, on being asked what reward he should be 
given replied, “The command of a battalion;” 
whereupon the Prime Minister who stood by ex- 
claimed, ‘‘ Sire, this is great presumption!” But 
the King quietly observed, “ Give him what he 

eat 


A POOR PRAYER 


asks; his presumption honors me!” We seek and 
are contented with too little. Let us, as William 
Carey said, ‘ undertake great things for God and 
expect great things from Him”’: 


“ For the love of God is broader 
Than the measure of man’s mind; 
And the heart of the Eternal 
Is most wonderfully kind.” 


It is a great thing to be enrolled as one of the 
servants of the King: Ich dien is a royal motto; 
nevertheless the King says to those who link their 
fortunes with His cause, ‘ Henceforth I call you 
not servants, for the servant knoweth not what his 
lord doeth: but I have called you friends, for all 
things that I have heard of my Father I have made 
known unto you. Ye have not chosen me, but I 
have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should 
go and bring forth fruit and that your fruit should 
remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father 
in my name he may give it you.” 


No ConTINUANCE 


The prayer of the Prodigal, moreover, was a 
poor prayer because it.did not hold out. When he 
came within sight of his father’s house his courage 
failed him and he halted in his tracks. But across 
the meadow yonder an old man had long been hop- 
ing against hope and looking off toward the hills. 
On seeing his wayward boy he knew him—despite 


[117 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


his rags he knew him—and staff in hand he 
hastened to meet him “ while he was yet a great 
way off,” 

“And he fell on his neck and kissed him.” The 
whole content of the Gospel was in that kiss. It 
sealed the Prodigal’s lips, so that his contemplated 
plea for a servant’s place in his father’s house was 
never spoken. ‘Thus are our poor prayers inter- 
cepted and amended and adjusted to the loving 
mind of God by an all-wise Mediator at the throne 
of heavenly grace. “ We know not what to pray 
for as we ought’”’; but we have a Friend who 
“ever liveth to make intercession for us.” 

A great surprise awaits us in heaven. ‘The 
Prodigal would have been content with the place of 
a menial in his father’s fields; but behold him sit- 
ting at table in his father’s house, clothed in a 
sumptuous robe and wearing a signet ring! Then 
listen to this: ‘‘ Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, 
neither have entered into the heart of man, the 
things which God hath prepared for them that love 
him!” Or this: “ Behold what manner of love 
the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should 
be called the sons of God: therefore the world 
knoweth us not, because it knew him not.” Or 
this, ‘‘ Beloved, now are we sons of God, and it 
doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know 
that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; 
for we shall see him as he is.” 


[ 118 ] 


IX 


THE LOVE THAT WILL NOT 
LET US GO 


“But when he was yet a great way off, his 
father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, 
and fell on his neck and kissed him. And the 
son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against 
heaven and in thy sight, and am no more worthy 
to be called thy son.” —LUKE 15: 20, 21. 


Ix 
THE LOVE THAT WILL NOT LET US GO 


T is easy to say “ God is love,”—just as easy as 

| to say “eternity” or “infinite space,”—and 

just as difficult to measure what we are say- 

ing. We are like children on the beach trying to 

dip up the ocean in a gourd. O the length, and 
breadth, and depth and height of it! 

In all the sweep of human observation and ex- 
perience there is no suitable analogy for the love of 
God; the nearest approach to it is in the attitude 
of the father in this parable toward his wayward 
boy. Observe to begin with, his love was 


A CarE-TAKING LOVE 


It would appear that this Younger son had a 
wayward will of his own, a will that had involved 
him in a sea of troubles: but even in the ungrateful 
years of his expatriation, his father had been lov- 
ing him. And after his return he was fed at the 
same table.and-clothed.as comfortably as his Elder 
brother, though from every worldly point of view 
he ill deserved it. | 

‘In like manner the gifts of Providence are dis- 
tributed “ without respect of persons.” The rain 


[ 121 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


falls upon the thirsty fields of “the just and the 
unjust alike’ (Matt. 5: 45) so that even the deso- 
late and waste places are made to rejoice (Job 
38: 26). 

The conclusion is inevitable: ‘ Bless the Lord, 
O my soul, and forget not all his benefits!” Yet 
there are multitudes of respectable people who live 
on God’s bounty without the common courtesy of 
thanks! In the morning they set forth into an 
Unknown Country of cares and responsibilities 
without invoking His guidance; and at night they 
enter another Unknown Country without an ap- 
parent thought of His protecting care. Such a 
prayerless life is a reckless and most unreasonable 
life. 


A PERSEVERING LOVE 


But some one may ask, Why did the father of 
the Prodigal allow him to leave home? Perhaps 
he knew that, considering all, it was the best thing 
to do. Over my desk in the old village school was 
this motto: “ Experience isa bitter school, but 
fools will learn in no other.” The Far Country 
has its lessons.. And the issue in this case proved 
that the father was right. The beggarly youth 
who returned from that Far Country was a great 
improvement on the young fellow who, with his 
“ portion of the living” in his girdle, went swing- 
ing out toward it. 

[ 122] 


THE LOVE THAT WILL NOT LET US GO 





We pray, “ Lead us not into temptation;” and 
we may be assured that ‘God tempteth no man” 
(James 1:13). Nevertheless if our faces are set 
toward temptation He may allow it in the hope of 
our bringing back some salutary lessons from the 
bitter school. This is a part of our chastening for 
good ; and happy is the man who can profit thereby: 
as it is written, ‘““ No chastening for the present 
seemeth to be joyous but grievous; nevertheless 
afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of right- 
eousness to them that are exercised thereby” 
(Heb. 12:11). Furthermore, “we have had 
tathers of our flesh who corrected us, and we 
gave them reverence; shall we not much rather be 
in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? 
For they verily chastened us after their own pleas- 
ure, but he for our profit, that we might be partak- 
ers of his holiness” (Heb. 12:9). And again, 
“ Blessed is the man that endureth temptation 
[trial]; for when he is tried he shall receive the 
crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to 
them that love him” (James 1: 12). 

It is safe to say, however, that after allowing his 
son to leave home the father did not forget him. 
He was doubtless disturbed by. rumors of his prof- 
ligate_ life. in.the-Far-Country. There would be 
heart-soreness, and anxious solicitude and prayers 
in the wakeful watches of the night. At this very 
hour there are farmers’ sons wasting their sub- 


[ 123 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


stance on “The Great White Way,” and girls 
dancing their young lives away in cabarets, whose 
parents are staining their pillows with bitter tears 
and hoping against hope for their return. In this 
we have a faint similitude of the long-suffering, 
never-wearying love of God. 

It is written of Jesus that when He “ knew that 
his hour was come that he should depart out of 
this world, unto the Father, having loved his own 
which were in the world he loved them unto the 
end.” He knew that Judas was about to betray 
Him, that Peter was about to deny Him, and that 
all His disciples were about to forsake Him; but 
that did not cool the ardor of His love. So, sitting 
on the throne of His majesty, to-day, and witness- 
ing the misdeeds of the children of men, He could 
end it all and justly with a breath of His nostrils, 
but His loving heart broods over them. Why are 
evil-doers spared? ‘ Beloved, the Lord is not.slack 
concerning his promise as some men count slack- 
ness, but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing 
that any should perish but that all should come to 
repentance”? (2 Pet. 3:9). Witness His for- 
bearance in the case of Ephraim: “I drew him 
with hands of love and he compassed me about 
with lies—How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? 
‘ How shall I make thee as Admah? how 
shall I set thee as Zeboim? Mine heart is turned 
within me!” (Hosea 11: 8). 


[ 124 ] 


THE LOVE THAT WILL NOT LET US GO 


A ForGIvVING LOVE 


It is a mistake to say that God meets the return- 
ing sinner only “half-way.” ‘The Prodigal halts in 
sight of his home. The hope.andcourage that 
haye.sustained.-him.on-his.difficult.journey.thus.far 
have all oozed out... Now..what?....His.father.sees 
him when he is “ yet a great way off.” 

Nor is that all. He might have seen him and 
not recognized him; but seeing him with the two 
eyes of his heart he knows this ragged stranger as 
his own dear boy. And he has “ compassion upon 
him.” Pitiful indeed is the bent figure of the 
Prodigal on yonder hill. All the memories of his 
sweet, wilful boyhood come thronging to_ the 
father’s aching heart and eyes. See, he “runs” 
to meet_him! ‘To-morrow.-he_willfeel.the strain 
upon his aged limbs but what matters it? His 
son is coming home! He has reached him; he 
“falls upon his neck ”—(Here imagine a paren- 
thesis with all love’s sobbing silences in it)—“ and 
kisses him.” 

Put into that kiss all the possible content of an 
infinite heart and you have a faint expression. of 
what Paul intimates where he says: “I bow my 
knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of 
whom the whole family in heaven and earth is 
named, that he would grant you, according to the 
riches of his glory to be strengthened with might 


[ 125 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


by his Spirit in the inner man: that Christ may 
dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted 
and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend 
with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and 
depth and height, and to know the love of Christ 
which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled 
with all the fulness of God!” (Eph. 3: 14-19). 


A FatTHER’s LOVE 


No reader of the Golden Parable can fail to 
observe two singular omissions. ‘The first is the 
absence of all mention of a mother in the Prodi- 
gal’s home. Is this because we are expected to find 
both father-love and mother-love in God? (See 
Isa. 66: 13.) It must be so: otherwise there would 
be a great something missing in it. 

A wife, bearing signs of poverty and ill-usage, 
once called me to the bedside of her dying htisband. 
“He has lived a bad life,” she said, “and I’m not 
sure he’ll see you... When.I was announced as 
the minister he straightway turned his face to the 
wall and refused to hear or uttera word. I opened 
the Bible but, instead of reading from the printed 
page, i began to repeat: 


“The Lord’s my shepherd, I'll not want: 
He makes me down to lie 

In pastures green; He leadeth me 
The quiet waters by.” 


Presently the sick man’s shoulders began to trem- 
[ 126 ] 


THE LOVE THAT WILL NOT LET US GO 


ble, and_as_I_ went on, the memories-of.a home in 
the Hielands.came.crowding back to him. Soon a 
fevered hand was reached out; I held it and 
went on: 
“ Yea, though I walk through Death’s dark vale, 
Yet will I fear no ill; 


For Thou art with me, and Thy rod 
And staff me comfort still,” 


By that time he was quietly sobbing, “O my 
mither! ‘Dear mither, I’ve wandered far!” And 
I have reason to trust that the prodigal came home 
at that eleventh hour as I knelt in prayer beside 
him. 

Why not? Is it ever too late to mend? “ Be- 
twixt the saddle and the ground, mercy sought is 
mercy found.” It is not safe, however, to pre- 
sume upon the mercy of God. An old-time writer 
says: “ The Lord saved one penitent thief in His 
dying hour, so that no one might ever despair; but 
only one, so that none might take undue advantage 
of His grace.” ‘The part of wisdom is to “ seek the 
Lord while he may be found and call upon him 
while he is near,” rather than to. wait until the 
currents of the heart run slow and “ desire fails.” 

The other omission in the Golden Parable is the 
apparent neglect of the father in not going into 
the Far Country to seek his son. But “no parable 
must be made to go on all fours.” The needed 
thought is supplied in the companion Parable of 


[ 127 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


the Shepherd who “left the ninety and nine and 
went out after that which was lost until he found 
it.” ‘The whole fabric of divine love is thus com- 
pleted; as it is written, “For God so loved the 
world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that 
whosoever believeth in him should not perish but 
have everlasting life.” For what is the Incarna- 
tion but the going out of the Father into the desert 
to seek that which was lost? 

And here is its corollary: “ Behold, what manner 
of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we 
should be called the [reclaimed] sons of God! 
Therefore the world knoweth us not, because it 
knew him not. Beloved, now are we sons of 
God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: 
but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall 
be like him;-for we shall see him as he is.” 


[ 128 ] 


xX 
“GRACE ABOUNDING” 


“But the father said to his servants, Bring 
forth the best robe, and put 1t on him; and put a 
ring on his hand and shoes on his feet: and bring 
hither the fatted calf and kill it; and let us eat 
and be merry: for this my son was dead and ts 
alive again; he was lost and is found.” 

—LUKE 15: 22-24. 


Xx 
“GRACE ABOUNDING” 


NE of the most wonderful chapters in the 
() wonderful Book is the fifth of Romans, 
in which free grace is set forth as the 
vital factor in Justification by Faith. It concludes 
thus: “ Where sin abounded, grace did much more 
abound; that as sin reigned unto death, even so 
might grace reign, through righteousness, unto 
eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.” No end of 
commentaries have been written on those words; 
but there is none so clear and helpful as that fur- 
nished by Christ Himself in this Parable of the 
Prodigal Son. 

See the youth on his arrival at the old home: a 
sorry figure in rags and tatters: and behold how 
sin hath abounded! It has wrought its utmost, 
leaving him without the shadow of a claim upon 
his father’s favor. 

Then look at him a little later, seated at table 
in his father’s house, as highly favored as if he 
had never gone wrong: and behold how grace hath 
much more abounded! * 

1 Grace and gratis are cognate words. Nobody is saved by 
personal merit; but always by the unmerited favor of God. 


[ 181 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 





THE ROBE 


Observe, he is clothed in respectability. If this 
bestowal of “the best robe” means anything it 
means that the father wished it understood that 
thenceforth his wayward boy was entitled to both 
self-respect and the respect of those about him. 
Otherwise any cast-off or partly-worn garments 
would have been good enough for him. 

-The sum total of Christian ethics is embraced in 
righteousness (Zech. 3: 8-5; cf. Eph. 4: 22-24). 
Only, this righteousness is not self-righteousness 
but the righteousness of God which is imputed by 
faith in Christ (Rom. 3: 10-28). 

The righteousness thus imputed to the followers 
of Christ involves, on the one hand, complete free- 
dom from sin and, on the other, complete obedience 
to divine law. Its other name is holiness, which 
no man can of himself attain unto, and yet “ with- 
out which no man shall see God” (Heb. 12: 14). 
it is only through Christ that our sins are so 
wholly blotted out and sunk in the unfathomable 
depths of a soundless sea that they are “ remem- 
bered no more against us.” And it is only as the 
obedience of Christ is put to our account that we 
can be reckoned faultless before the law: where- 
fore, so far as salvation goes, all our boasted 
righteousness is naught, and we are “ complete in 
him.” 

[ 182 ] 


“GRACE ABOUNDING” 





“ Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness 
My beauty are, my glorious dress; 
’Mid flaming worlds, in these arrayed, 
With joy shall I lift up my head.” 


This is free grace. “All our righteousnesses are 
as filthy rags’ (Isa. 64: 6; cf. Phil. 3: 8-9). The 
“best robe” is the wedding garment of fine linen 
clean and white, without which none can appear at 
the marriage supper of the Lamb! (Matt. 22: 11- 
12). 


Tue RING 


The Prodigal, having been restored to respecta- 
bility, is now invested with such authority as be- 
comes his father’s son. 

When Pharaoh said to Joseph, “ Forasmuch 

as there is none so discreet and wise as 
thou art, thou shalt be over my house and accord- 
ing to thy word shall all my people be ruled,” he 
put a ring on his hand as a token of authority! 
(Gen. 41: 39-42). In the ring was a seal, which 
signified that the king himself was thenceforth to 
be regarded as sponsor for whatever Joseph as his 
vice-regent might do. 

Thus the Prodigal is restored to all the privileges 
of sonship except that his “ portion of the living” 
has been squandered, leaving his brother sole heir 
to the farmstead (see verse 31). At this point 
the Parable would appear to part company with the 


P 183 J 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


philosophy of grace, which makes forgiven sin- 
ners joint-heirs with Christ to an inheritance in- 
corruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not 
away (1 Pet. 1:4). But the divergence is only 
apparent. Sin, however repented of, leaves an 
ineradicable scar upon the soul; but, in view of 
the immeasurable riches of pardoning grace, it is 
a painless scar. How slight the loss of a few 
paltry acres to the Prodigal now reconciled with 
his father and restored to the joys of the old home! 

In like manner it is written, “ To him that over- 
cometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, 
even as I also overcame, and am set down with 
my Father in his throne” (Rev. 3:21). Mysteri- 
ous words! Heaven alone can disclose what they 
mean: as also those other words, “‘ And they shall 
reign forever and ever” (Rev. 22: 5). 


THE SHOES 


In those days shoes were an evident token of 
freedom. ‘The slave was a barefoot man. 

The Prodigal came home unshod; nevertheless, 
once there, he was neither a slave nor an hireling 
but a member of the family with all attendant 
privileges, freedom being the chiefest among them. 

It is said that Madame Roland, on being con- 
demned to the guillotine, exclaimed, “O Freedom, 
what abominations are wrought in thy sacred 
name!” It was the time of the Revolution in 


[ 184 ] 


“GRACE ABOUNDING” 





France. The red-capped mob, having divested it- 
self of all the restraints of authority, was surging 
through the streets of Paris with the cry, “ Lib- 
erty, equality, fraternity!” It was the impression 
of many that the Golden Age of freedom had 
begun. But presently the gutters ran red with 
blood and “ The Terror’ was under way. 

A sinner thinks himself free because he can do 
as he pleases: but to do as one pleases without 
reference to salutary law is to be in bondage to 
self and to one’s meaner self at that (Rom. 6: 16). 
The best definition of freedom is that already 
given, “perfect obedience to perfect law.” A 
Christian is free according to law: that is, free to 
do right; and anything more than that is merely 
license to go wrong. Wherefore, “he that is 
called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord’s 
freeman ” (1 Cor. 7: 22). 

The man who boasts of his freedom to go wrong 
is usually a bondslave of habit without knowing it. 
The Prodigal in the swine-field, so far from being 
free, was bound hand and foot “to a citizen of 
that country.” His freedom began when he re- 
solved to cut loose from his hard master and assert 
his freedom in filial love. So Jesus says, “If ye 
continue in my word then are ye my disciples in- 
deed ; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth 
shall make you free.” And Paul, “Let not sin 
therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should 


[ 135 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 





obey it in the lusts thereof: neither yield ye your 
members as instruments of unrighteousness unto 
sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that 
are alive from the dead, and your members as in- 
struments of righteousness unto God. For sin 
shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not 
under the law, but under grace. What then? 
Shall we sin, because we are not under the law, 
but under grace? God forbid! Know ye not, that 
to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his 
servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin 
unto death or of obedience unto righteousness? 
But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of 
sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form 
of doctrine which was delivered you” (Rom. 
6: 12-17). | 


THE FATTED CALF 


It was customary in the entertainment of an 
honored guest to serve a firstling of the flock, 
which had been kept and fostered for such an 
occasion (Gen. 18: 7; also 1 Sam. 28: 24). It is 
evident, in the case of the returned Prodigal, that 
his father thought the best none too good for him. 

A great surprise awaits the redeemed in heaven, 
as it is written, “‘ Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, 
neither have entered into the heart of man the 
things which God hath prepared for them that love 
him” (1 Cor. 2:9). We have all dreamed 


[ 136 ] 


“GRACE ABOUNDING” 


dreams and seen entrancing visions of the Celestial 
Country; but what must it be to be there? Our 
amazement when we find ourselves in heaven will 
be like that of the Queen of Sheba who, when the 
riches of Solomon’s kingdom were shown her, was 
moved to say, “I believed not until I came and 
saw: and behold, the half was not told me!” 

And the very best in heaven is for those whom 
Christ had saved from the penalty and power of 
sin. The holy angels in their shining seats know 
nothing of the ineffable joy of forgiveness; they 
worship the Lord as “ chiefest among ten thousand 
and altogether lovely” but not as their Saviour. 
They have not come out of the tribulation of sin 
and cannot join in the somg, “ Worthy art thou to 
receive glory, and honor, and dominion and power ; 
for thou hast redeemed us by thy blood!” One 
of the favorite hymns of long ago begins this way: 


“Ve angels who stand round the throne 
And view my Immanuel’s face, 
In rapturous songs make Him known 
And tune your sweet harps to His praise:” 


but the climax of the hymn is reserved for the 
last verse: 


“Ve saints who stand nearer than they 
And cast your bright crowns at Hts feet, 
His grace and His glory display 
And all His rich mercy repeat!” 


[ 187 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


Grace, mercy, and crowns to cast at His feet! The 
robe of fine linen, clean and white, which is the 
righteousness of saints! The signet ring of son- 
ship and co-heirship with the only begotten Son! 
The sandals of “the Law of Freedom,” to be 
worn by us as ministering spirits in eternal serv- 
ice! A banquet spread with the best of God’s 
good things! And all without money and without 
price! This for those who continue faithful in 
labor of love and patience of hope. What more 
could heart desire? 

When Moses, at the end of the wilderness jour- 
ney, stood on a mountain top and surveyed the 
Promised Land, “all Naphtali and Ephraim and 
Judah, even unto the utmost sea,’ he was not 
permitted to enter in; but there was something 
more excellent in store for him. He closed his 
eyes, and opened them in “a better country, even 
an heavenly.” 


“O could we make our doubts remove, 
These gloomy doubts that rise, 

| And see the Canaan that we love, 
With unbeclouded eyes; 


Could we but climb where Meses stood, 
And wiew the landscape o'er, 

Not Jordan’s stream, nor death’s cold flood 
Could fright us from the shore!” 


[ 138 ] 


XI 
JOY IN HEAVEN 


“And they began to be merry.”—LuKE 1 5:24. 


XI 
JOY IN HEAVEN 


\ ), JE are standing in the doorway of the 
Prodigal’s home. What is going on? 

“ Merry-making ” is the word: and it 

is the very word that tells most happily of heaven. 


In his Maud ‘Tennyson gives pathetic expression 
to a universal longing: 


“Ah Christ, if it were possible 
For one short hour to see 
The friends we loved, that they might tell 
What and where they be!” 


The Scripture gives us a sidelight into their pres- 
ent occupation: “There is joy in the presence of 
the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth ” 
(Luke 15:10). By this it appears that the re- 
deemed are entertained in the Father’s house as 
his 


GUESTS 


No doubt there were people in the neighbor- 
hood of the Prodigal’s home who, by reason of 
non-acquaintance with the family or lack of sym- 
pathy with the occasion, were absent from the 
entertainment. The singular phrase “in the pres- 


[ 141 ] 


‘THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


ence [en-opion, 1. e., before the eyes] of the 
angels ” may possibly be accounted for in that way. 
The angels, never having sinned and having there- 
fore no experiential part in tHe great salvation, 
could scarcely be expected to rejoice so cordially 
over the home-coming of the Prodigal as members 
of the household and other immediate friends who 
knew all about it. They are interested onlookers, 
but cannot be fully-advised partakers of the feast. 
It is the waiting kinsfolk and neighbors in heaven, 
those who have been prayerfully and hopefully 
waiting, whose hearts surrender to rejoicing when 
the wanderer comes in. 


MINISTERING SPIRITS 


There is one point, however, at which our trans- 
lated friends are at one with the angels, to wit, in 
seeking to save. “Are they not all ministering 
spirits, sent forth to minister? ’’ There is a blessed 
truth—not touched upon in the parable—in the 
doctrine of “ guardian angels,” concerning which 
David wrote, “ He shall give his angels charge over 
thee, . . . lest thou dash thy foot against a 
stone.” ‘The Bible is full of such references. Min- 
istering spirits appear to Abraham (Gen. 22: 11); 
to Jacob (Gen. 28: 12); to Hagar (Gen. 16: 7); 
to Balaam (Num. 22: 23-35) ; to Gideon (Judges 
6:11); to Manoah’s wife (Judges 13: 3-20); 
to Elijah (1 Kings 19:5); to Zechariah 

f 142 ] 


JOY IN HEAVEN 


(Zech. 1:4) and to many others. They foretell 
the Incarnation, make known the wonderful event 
when due, attend on the ministry of Jesus, succor 
Him after His Temptation in the Wilderness and 
in the Garden of Gethsemane, hover over His 
Cross in legions, roll away the stone from His 
sepulchre and announce His Resurrection. They 
appear to Peter (Acts 12:8); to Paul (Acts 
27:23); to Philip (Acts 1:26); to Cornelius 
(Acts 10: 7); to John (Rev. 1). 

In the conversation of Jesus with Moses and 
Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration He gives 
us to understand that the spirits of just men made 
perfect are in a closer relation to mundane affairs 
than is generally supposed. Here were two men, 
Moses and Elijah, who had lived five hundred 
years apart and had been dead more than a thou- 
sand years; yet they knew each other and felt a 
mutual interest in the earthly work of Jesus. They 
had come all the way from heaven to minister to 
Him when the shadow of the Cross fell over Him, 
as dark and cold as a winter’s night; “‘ they spake 
of the decease which he should accomplish at 
Jerusalem” (Luke 9:31). The inference is in- 
evitable that they, while in heaven, had known 
what was occurring and about to occur on earth; 
and more, that they were under commission to 
assist in some of its important events. Our loved 
ones in heaven are likewise of those who are “ sent 


[ 143 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


forth to minister for such as shall be heirs of sal- 
vation.” They are “sent”: and—unlike Chris- 
tians on earth—when sent they always go. 

We are thus warranted in believing not only that 
there are parents in heaven watching and waiting, 
like Monica on the shores of Africa, to hail the 
home-coming of their wayward children; but that 
there is a common interest among all the “ neigh- 
bors” there in our welfare and a general rejoicing 
over every conversion that occurs. This is set 
forth in the complementary parable of the Shep- 
herd who, on bringing the lost sheep back to the 
fold, “ calleth together his friends and neighbors ” 
to rejoice with him. 


Tue FESTAL CIRCLE 


Ask the Prodigal now if he is happier than he 
was amid the dissipations of the Far Country. My 
friend Mike Hickey, who found Christ after spend- 
ing twenty years in Sing Sing, tells me that he finds 
more joy in a single night of service among the 
down-and-outs on the Bowery than in all the thirty 
years of his previous life of lawless indulgence. 
No true Christian can be a hypochondriac. “ Re- 
joice in the Lord; and again I say, rejoice! 
Rejoice alway!”” Why not, when one has come 
forth out of darkness into light? | 

Ask the “ neighbors” if they are enjoying them- 
selves. Years ago, when the Central America went 

[ 144 ] 


JOY IN HEAVEN 


down just outside New York Harbor, the people 
were gathered at the Battery and, as the rescuing 
boats came in, hailed them with joy, passing the 
word around, “‘ Five men saved!” ‘‘ Ten more 
saved!” Pure and blessed unselfishness that, like 
the greetings of the neighbors in the Prodigal’s 
home. And our Lord tells us that heaven rejoices 
in like manner when the redeemed come in, ‘‘ with 
songs and everlasting joy upon their heads.” 

But what shall we say of the father’s happiness, 
as he sat at table in the old home and looked on 
the son for whose return he had been praying and 
hoping through the years? So does our Father in 
heaven rejoice over every sinner that repenteth. 
And so does our Elder Brother rejoice when He 
“sees of the fruit of the travail of his soul;” for 
it was He that, sent of the Father, came on a long 
journey from heaven to earth to seek and save. 
And at what a cost He found us! 

“ Lord, whence are those blood-drops all the way 

That mark out the mountain’s track?” 


“They were shed for one who had gone astray 
Ere the Shepherd could bring him back,” 


“ Rejoice with me!’ Heaven rings with mutual 
felicitation, Angels and saints triumphant, friends, 
neighbors, members of the great family which in 
heaven and earth is one, all rejoice together over 
the one who was dead but is alive again, who was 
lost and is found. 

[ 145 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


—_——— 


I like to think of heaven that way. But why not 
have a foretaste of heaven here and now? Let us 
rule out the selfish merry-making of the world, the 
laughter which is as the crackling of the thorns, and 
ring in the joy of those who keep company with 
erase dh ast 

I’m glad you are saved, my friends; let me re- 
joice with you. Join hands with us in the family 
circle everywhere and let the loving-cup go round! 

“ Sing to the Lord a joyful song 
Lift up your hearts, your voices raise; 


To us God’s gracious gifts belong, 
To Him our songs of love and praise. 


For life below, with all its bliss, 
And for that life, more pure and high, 
That inner life, which over this, 
Shall ever shine and never die!” 


The Church will thus rejoice when we live as 
ministers of mercy and witnesses for Christ, self- 
forgetful in seeking to save. There is no joy so 
like the joy of heaven as the rejoicing of a life- 
saver on earth. And there is no reward like his; 
as it is written, “ They that be wise shall shine as 
the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn, 
many to righteousness as the stars forever and 
ever.” 

The ministry of the humble pastor in the village 
of Anworth was unattended by any visible fruits. 
He was repeatedly urged to seek a larger and more 


[ 146 ] 


JOY IN HEAVEN 


important parish but declined, from a deep sense of 
responsibility for the few sheep over whom God 
had made him shepherd. His years were spent in 
earnest prayer for them: and he left his great 
ambition on record in these words: 
“Oh, if one soul from Anworth 
Meet me at God’s right hand, 


My heaven will be two heavens 
In Immanuel’s Land.” 


Yet never while he lived was a single sheaf har- 
vested. The grass had not grown over his grave, 
however, before the ingathering began, and it has 
continued unto this day. Many, many souls from 
Anworth and elsewhere have met the saintly 
Samuel Rutherford “ at God’s right hand” to join 
him in the merry-making of redeeming grace. 

We are accustomed to think of heaven as “a 
happy land, far far away: ” but heaven, if we are 
ever to enjoy it, must have its beginning here. 
“The milk and honey,” says an old writer, “ are 
beyond the wilderness.” But not all. Now if 
ever, “are ye the sons of God.” ‘There is no 
heaven, either here or beyond, for selfish souls. 
There is no. feast for those who eat their bread 
alone. To weep in prayer for those who weep in 
sin,—and to rejoice with them that, returning from 
the Far Country, make merry in the Father’s house 
—this is to anticipate glory and share in the felicity 
of heaven here and now. 

| [ 147 ] 





XIT 
THE ELDER SON 


“ Now his elder son was in the field: and as he 
came and drew nigh to the house, he heard 
musick and dancing. And he called one of the 
servants, and asked what these things meant. 
And he said unto him, Thy brother 1s come; and 
thy father hath killed the fatted calf, because he 
_ hath recewed him safe and sound. And he was 
angry, and would not goin: therefore came his 
father out, and intreated him. And he answer- 
ing said to is father, Lo, these many years do I 
serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy 
commandment; and yet thou never gavest me a 
kid, that I might make merry with my friends: 
but as soon as this thy son was come, which hath 
devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed 
for him the fatted calf. And he sad unto him, 
Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have ts 
thine. It was meet that we should make merry 
and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and 
is alive again; and was lost, and is found.” 

—LUKE 15: 25-32. 


XII 
THE ELDER SON 


NE could almost wish that the story had 
ended without this sad addendum. But 
the Elder son is always in evidence; and 


the Golden Parable would not be complete without 
him. Observe, he was 


A DuTIFUL Son * 


No doubt he was sincere in saying, “‘ Lo, these 
many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I 
at any time thy commandment;” but what of it? 
Was anything less to be expected of him? (Luke 
17: 10). His wayward brother in going to the 
Far Country had not only left him in sole enjoy- 
ment of the home-life but in exclusive possession 
of the remainder of the estate. What more could 
he ask? 


At Opps Wits His FATHER ~ 


On being informed by a servant of the occasion 
of the merry-making, he is rudely jarred out of his 
self-complacency. His violated sense of justice 
rises up in angry protest against his father’s in- 
vidious treatment of the wastrel: “ Despite my 


[ 151 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


faithful service thou never gavest me even a kid 
wherewith to make merry: but as soon as this thy 
son was come, thou hast killed for him the fatted 
cali) 


AT Opps Wirt His BrRoTHER 


He acknowledges no kinship with the Prodigal; 
but refers to him contemptuously as “ this, thy son, 
which hath devoured thy living with harlots.” 
Hard words these; and a true echo of the world’s 
charity. When a man’s down, hold him there until 
he’s down and out. “Alas for the rarity of 
charity under the sun!” 


AT Opps WitH HIMSELF 


The man, moreover, is standing in his own light. 
He has come down through the centuries, with an 
angry, envious face pressed against the window of 
his father’s house, and refusing to go in. How 
much wiser, from the mere selfish point of view, 
had he entered and taken part in the festivities. 
The music and merry-making were his for the 
taking: but the father had need to come out and 
entreat him, and he entreated him in vain. ‘‘ He 
would not go in.” 


AFAR OFF 


In his gloomy isolation, self-centered, hopelessly 
alone and entrenched in angry censoriousness, he 


[ 152 ] 


THE ELDER SON 


| PAE RSP RIE SEE TT ABA TARE EAST ERA Tt ETS ASA CTS DE OTT ERR RIE ASSESSOR TETRAMER SAD RTE 


was really further away from his father’s house 
than ever his spendthrift brother was when in the 
Far Country feeding swine. 


It is a lamentable thing to be out of harmony 
with divine grace. There is more hope for the 
chief of sinners who knows his fault than for the 
most respectable of the self-righteous; because 
while the one may repent and be saved, the other, 
being unconscious of sin, is confident that he 
“needeth no repentance.” As between the self- 
satisfied Pharisee and the sin-convicted publican 
we have the testimony of Jesus that “this man 
went down to his house justified rather than the 
other: ” and the reason is plain to see. It was, I 
think, the old poet Quarles who put it thus: 


“ Two went to pray: or rather say, 
One went to brag, the other went to pray; 
One step’t up close and looked on high, 
While tother scarce dared lift his eye; 
One nearer to the altar trod, 
The other nearer to the altar’s God.” 


PHARISAISM 


Be it remembered that this parable was addressed 
to the Pharisees, who were the religious leaders of | 
their time. Their constant complaint against Jesus 
was that he “ was the friend of publicans and sin- 
ners,’ while they themselves were the most re- 


153 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


spectable members of the Jewish Church. They 
were not only scrupulous in their observance of 
things commanded but as to many things not com- 
manded, such as semi-weekly fasts, tithes of gar- 
den herbs and the like. Yet the fiercest lightnings 
that ever flashed from the lips of Jesus were di- 
rected at them: “Woe unto you mask wearers; 
whited sepulchres, fair without but within full of 
dead men’s bones and all uncleanness—making 
long prayers for a pretense and rattling your coins 
in corban to be seen of men—how shall ye escape 
the judgment of hell!” This to proud church- 
going moralists who deemed themselves to be right- 
eous and despised others. 

There are church members still who draw aside 
from reformed inebriates, and from the woman 
with a past as she anoints her Saviour’s feet. She 
may be God’s repentant daughter but the pro- 
prieties must be observed. Let us be honest with 
ourselves. ‘‘ There is so much bad in the best of 
us and so much good in the worst of us’”’ that no 
professing Christian can afford to put on any 
superior airs. It was this very spirit of caste in 
the churches of his time that moved Robert Burns 
to write in bitterness of soul: 


“O ye wha are sae guid yoursel’ 
Sae pious and sae holy, 
Ye’ve nought to do but mark and tell 
Your neebor’s fauts and folly:— 


[ 154 J 


LHE ELDER SON 


Ye see your state uv’ theirs compared, 
And shudder at the niffer; 

But cast a moment’s fair regard, 
What makes the mighty differ? 


“Then gently scan your brother man, 

Still gentler sister woman; 

Though each may gang a kennin’ wrang, 
To step aside is human. 

One point must still be greatly dark, 
The moving why they do it; 

And just as lamely can ye mark 
How far perhaps they rue 1t. 


“Who made the heart, ’tis He alone 

Decidedly can try us; 

He knows each chord, its various tone, 
Each spring, its various bias: 

Then at the balance let’s be mute, 
We never can adjust it; 

What's done we parily may compute, 
But know not what's resisted.” 


It would be a great mistake, however, to assume 
that the Pharisees are all members of the Church. 
There are others—others who look in at the win- 
dows like this Elder son, and take umbrage at the 


rejoicings of grace. 


not all come in? 


The reason why people join the church is pre- 
sumably because they realize their dependence on 
Christ, and the Scriptures, and mutual prayer and 
all the other “ means of grace.” ‘Then why should 
Can it be that there are those 


[ 155 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


who deem themselves good enough as they are, 
and strong enough to get along without such helps? 
A bold profession, surely, and not easy to live up 
to! The fact is that the “good” people are all 
outside of the Church. Those who are in there do 
not profess to be good but only trying to be; and 
believe me, my friend, it is uphill work. If you 
think otherwise, come in and show us how to do it. 

The most unpopular thing the Saviour ever did 
was when He issued a full and free pardon to a 
thief who repented in articulo morits. <A life spent 
in lawlessness; a brief acquaintance with Jesus on 
His cross; the cry of a contrite heart, ‘‘ Lord, re- 
member me!” and an immediate rolling back of 
the gates of Paradise to receive him! Is this rea- 
sonable? Aye, it is the very sweet reasonableness 
of the grace of God! 

The one thing for which the self-righteous can- 
not forgive the only begotten Son of God is that 
He “came to call not the righteous but sinners to 
repentance.” The religious leaders of His time, 
clad in the conspicuous garb of a superficial mo- 
vality, charged Him with being the “ friend of sin- 
ners”; to whom He replied, “ Verily I say unto 
you that publicans and harlots shall go into the 
kingdom of heaven before you.” ‘The Church as 
Jesus organized it was made up exclusively of 
sinners; and so it remains to this day. ‘“‘ We are 
all John Thompson’s bairns.” Church members, 


[ 156 ] 


THE ELDER SON 


like others, are not good but only trying to be good 
and, incidentally, finding it hard work; sinners, 
but, blessed be God! sinners saved by grace. 

_ “Whereunto shall I liken the men of this gen- 
eration?’ asked Jesus. “ They are like unto chil- 
dren in the market-place, calling one to another, 
We have piped unto you and ye have not danced, 
we have mourned unto you and ye have not 
lamented ; but wisdom is justified of her children.” 
Celsus complained that there were almost no mem- 
bers of the “respectable” class in the Early 
Church; and Paul admitted it, saying, ‘‘ Not many 
wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not 
many noble are called; but God hath chosen the 
weak things of the world to confound the things 
which are mighty; that no flesh should glory in 
his presence.” 

The fundamental doctrine of the Gospel is justi- ~ 
fication by faith; which Luther characterized as 
“the articulum of a standing or a falling church.” 
Salvation is not by works but of grace; it is “the 
free gift of God” on sole condition of faith in His 
beloved Son. Grace and gratis are cognate words. 

The counterpart of divine grace is human char- 
ity. “Though I speak with the tongues of men 
and angels and have not charity, I am become as 
sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.” Let us re- 
joice, therefore, to see the wayward coming in. 
Heaven will be full of those who were once 


[ 157 ] 


THE GOLDEN PARABLE 


spiritually dead and are alive again, who were lost 
and are found. Great surprises await us! I won- 
der if we shall see Abraham there in friendly con- 
verse with Jacob “the overreacher’” ? Or Moses 
walking along the golden streets with Bathsheba’s 
old friend? Or John the Divine kneeling beside 
the penitent thief? Or if we shall find ourselves 
at table vis-d-vis with Rahab the harlot? If so, it 
would perhaps be well to think twice before with- 
holding our charity from those who are here par- 
takers with us of the mercy of God. 

There is no limit to pardoning grace. “Him 
that cometh unto me,” the Saviour said, “I will 
im no wise cast out.” But the sinner must come. 
So longas he feels no need of a Saviour, relying 
on his personal merit instead of “ the righteousness 
which is of God by faith,” he is self-excluded from 
the Kingdom of heaven: for, as Patl says, “If 
righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead 
in vain’ (Gal. 2: 21; cf. Phil. 3: 7-14). 

A certain ruler who came to Jesus asking “‘ What 
shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?” on 
being reminded of the importance of keeping the 
commandments, protested that he had “ kept them 
all from his youth up;” whereupon Jesus said, 
“One thing thou lackest: Go, part with everything 
that separates thee from a life of true holiness and 
come and follow me.” As aman of good inten- 
tions and upright life he was “not far from the 


[ 158 ] 


THE ELDER SON 


kingdom of God.’’ One step and he would be 
there! But failing to take that one step he would 
remain outside the Kingdom of God. 


We leave the Prodigal at the banquet in the 
father’s house. ‘“‘ Likewise I say unto you, there 
is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth!”’ 
And the gates of that happy heaven are thronged 
with ever-increasing numbers of repentant and be- 
lieving sinners who straightway lend their voices to 
a chorus like the sound of many waters, “ Worthy 
is the Lamb that was slain, to receive honor, and 
glory, and dominion and power for ever and 
Over ia 

“What are these arrayed in white robes and 
whence came they? . . . And he said to me, 
These are they which have come out of tribulation 
and have washed their robes and made them white 
in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they be- 
fore the throne of God, and serve him day and 
night in his temple: and he that sitteth on the 
throne shall dwell among them. They shall hunger 
no more, neither thirst any more: neither shall the 
sun light on them nor any heat: for the Lamb, 
which is in the midst of the throne, shall feed them, 
and shall lead them unto living fountains of 
waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from 
their eyes.” 

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